


Blood on the Cobblestones

by crimsonherbarium



Series: Shattered Silver [3]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Lambert (The Witcher), Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Catriona Plague, Church of the Eternal Fire, Established Lambert/Keira Metz, F/M, Intrigue, Lambert-centric (The Witcher), M/M, Novigrad (The Witcher), Organized Crime, Plot Centric, Polyamory, Post-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Slow Burn, The Chameleon (The Witcher), Treasure Hunting, Witcher Contracts, as always, i promise i didn't resurrect Aiden again but he DOES appear, make of that what you will, some smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25439839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonherbarium/pseuds/crimsonherbarium
Summary: Back on the Path.It’s the last place in the world Lambert wants to be, but destiny hasn’t given him much of a choice. With the unexpected arrival of Gaetan, a witcher of the School of the Cat, he finds himself drawn into a web of troubles as he and his friends race against time to prevent calamity from befalling the Continent.The Black Sun dawns.Will you be ready when its light shines upon you?(This work is a sequel to two earlier Lambert/Aiden stories:Silver for MonstersandWhatsoever a Man Soweth. It can be read as a standalone, but you may find yourself lost in a couple of places.)
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Gaetan/Lambert (The Witcher), Lambert/Keira Metz
Series: Shattered Silver [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1316405
Comments: 79
Kudos: 65
Collections: Discord Community Archive, Witcher Rarepair Discord Collection





	1. Back on the Path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Returning once more as my indefatigable beta is the amazing [bookscorpion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion)! Be sure to check out their witcher works if you have the time :)

Winters passed slowly in Assengard.

Lambert knew that better than most. This was his fifth.

He would be damned if he admitted it out loud, but there were times when he missed Kaer Morhen. Hate the miserable place though he might, there was an undeniable tranquility to the old fortress.

Or at least, there had been once.

Now—years later, steeped in pain and loss and spilt blood, there was nothing good left of it. Losing Aiden for a second time had more than solidified that in his head. The amount of alcohol he would have needed to numb himself enough to set foot there again would have been more than enough to ensure he passed out and never woke up again.

Assengard wasn’t all bad. It was more crowded than Lambert would have liked—the surrounding city was sparsely populated, but the palace in which Keira and he by extension had taken up residence was fully staffed. It was comfortable, though, and familiar. He had needed familiar.

Geralt and Ciri had even elected to winter there this year, having had more than their fill of adventure after their recent run-in with Gaunter O’Dimm, and for that, Lambert was grateful. Taking a break from the Path was all well and good, but it was better with friends.

He wasn’t sure if it was easier or harder, losing Aiden a second time. True, he had some closure, but that was a small comfort in the face of everything he’d lost. Last time, he had retreated inward, let his pain blind him to everything except the desire for revenge. It had solved nothing. Once the fire had burnt itself out, there had been nothing left to hold him up.

Having others to lean on was good. He wouldn’t have said it out loud, but he was grateful for Geralt and Ciri’s company. Geralt, who had known him since he was a child and was reasonably good at telling when he needed to be distracted and when he needed to be left the hell alone. Ciri, who could sympathize better than most and often sat with him at night when he couldn’t sleep or simply talked in his general direction until he felt like talking back. He was lucky to have them.

And to have Keira, who against all odds had welcomed him back into her bedchamber. Things between them weren’t exactly the same as they had been before. There were cracks, of course, and neither had ever harbored any delusions of everlasting love. There was an easy sort of companionship between them, though, and Lambert always had an easier time sleeping when there was another person beside him. He didn’t sleep well, but he did sleep.

And he had to admit, the sex was still pretty fucking great.

If he was being honest with himself, the thing that had helped the most was that he wasn’t alone in his grief this time. The others may not have felt it as acutely as he did, but he didn’t expect them to. At least they had known Aiden, and known what he meant to Lambert. They understood, to some degree, why all those years ago he’d fallen into the abyss and never tried to crawl back out. They could laugh when Lambert told a story about him. They could remember Aiden alongside him.

It would never be enough to replace what he’d lost, but it helped to lessen the pain. He hadn’t realized what a heavy burden he’d been carrying by himself.

As comfortable as the palace was, though, it did get stale after a while. Lambert was grateful when Keira, exhausted of listening to him bickering with Geralt, sent the lot of them out to a neighboring town to procure some monster ingredients for her research. Using her megascope, she had apparently determined that there was a slyzard nest nearby, and she claimed she wanted some of their scale plates to examine.

And so, at dawn the following morning, Lambert, Geralt, and Ciri rode out of the city and into the surrounding plains.

The hooves of their horses beat in tandem against the packed earth of the road as they traveled. Lambert inhaled fresh air tinged with the scent of damp soil and the smoke of cooking fires in the far distance and grinned. For all he hated about the Path, he had missed the wind whipping through his hair as he rode. He had missed having even a small sense of purpose. He had missed the blood and sweat and adrenaline of a good fight.

That made it all the more disappointing when they reached their destination and found that someone had beaten them to it.

Geralt, who was the first of them to notice that something was amiss, gestured for Lambert and Ciri to hold back. The three of them dismounted their horses—Ciri much more gracefully than the others—and continued on foot toward the remains of the slyzard nest.

There could be no doubt that all of the monsters were dead. The clearing surrounding the rocky outcropping where the slyzards had made their nest was a massacre. Lambert counted at least three of the things dead on the ground. It was hard to be certain if there had been more than that. They had been expertly butchered.

Blood was everywhere—pooled and seeping into the ground, sprayed up the rocks, permeating the air itself so that the cloying, metallic scent of it clung to the inside of Lambert’s nose. He knelt, covering his face with his sleeve, to examine one of the larger chunks of dead monster.

“It was a sharp sword,” he commented, tilting his head as he peered into an enormous wound through which grey-green viscera were spilling out. “The wielder knew what he was doing. The cuts are clean. Methodical.”

“Light on his feet, too,” Geralt said, examining the footprints on the ground. “Blood splatter follows the arc of his sword. Unconventional fighting style.”

Lambert leaned in to look closer at the felled slyzard. The alkaloid scent of ergot seeds stung his nose even through the fabric of his sleeve. Draconid oil.

He stood, spitting on the ground. “Witcher.”

“Probably right about that. Not all of this blood is beast.” Geralt frowned. “Heavily wounded. He can’t have made it far.”

“If you two are finished playing detective,” Ciri called from the far side of the clearing, “I’ve found a trail.”

Found one she had, and Geralt’s prediction was looking more and more likely by the second. The color and volume of the blood that had soaked into the soil around each faint boot print told Lambert that it had come from an artery. The witcher they were tracking was probably near death, if not dead already. He gritted his teeth, knowing that this was still likely to be his fate one day. A witcher’s death. The only thanks he would ever get for the life he’d lived.

The witcher had made it further than any of them expected. The three of them tracked his path through the undergrowth for almost half a mile, following the trail of blood and the faint sound of labored breathing.

Lambert swore under his breath as he pushed through a tangle of brambles, and then ran directly into Geralt as the older man stopped short.

There was, in fact, a witcher dying on the ground by the stream in the small clearing in front of them. His head was shaved bald. He had an angular face, with a scar that ran from the tear duct of his left eye to the lower edge of his cheekbone. There was a deep wound in his thigh through which bright, arterial blood was pumping steadily, and another in his side where one of the slyzards had bitten through his armor.

Armor that was dyed the deep blue of the darkening sky. Armor that was designed more for speed and agility than protection. Armor that Lambert would have recognized anywhere, even without the telltale medallion that hung from the man’s neck. Lambert’s hand strayed unconsciously to the one around his own.

School of the Cat.

He was lying half-propped against a large, flat rock that had probably once been part of the riverbed. His teeth were bared in pain, and a significant amount of blood was smeared across his face and hands. Three empty potion bottles lay on the ground beside him. Clearly, none of them had made a difference.

Geralt stared at the man, a spark of recognition in his eyes. “Gaetan?”

“Well, if it isn’t Geralt of Rivia,” the witcher said through gritted teeth. “We have got to stop meeting like this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! 🎉
> 
> I kept telling myself that Whatsoever a Man Soweth was going to be the end of Lambert's story, but I'm not good at leaving well enough alone. If you've been reading since Silver for Monsters, welcome back for round 3! I've been working on this story for the past four months and I'm very pleased with the places it's going. I can't wait to share these chapters with you! It seems only right that, since Silver for Monsters was my first posted work on AO3, that this would be my 100th.
> 
> As always, updates every other week on Mondays. Thank you for reading and I hope you come back for more! If you enjoy my work, please consider leaving me a comment. I love hearing what you thought 🖤


	2. Where the Cat and Wolf Play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by [bookscorpion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion/)!

Lambert stared, for once in his life at a loss for words, unable to tear his gaze from the cat’s head medallion around the wounded witcher’s neck.

“What the hell happened to you?” Geralt demanded, stepping forward into the clearing.

“Slyzards,” Gaetan hissed through gritted teeth. “Sure you found ‘em if you rode in the same way I did. Bit off more than I could chew.”

“You’re not kidding.” Geralt nodded at the empty potion vials on the grass. “What was in those?”

“Two Swallows and a White Honey. Figured it couldn’t hurt.” Gaetan pressed his hands to the wound in his thigh, trying to staunch the flow of blood. His face was pale as chalk.

“Lambert.”

Geralt’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. “Huh?”

“White Raffard’s Decoction. Got any? Without it, he’s a goner.”

“Shit, I don’t know. Maybe.”

Lambert dug in his pockets, swearing when he fumbled and dropped a vial of Tawny Owl, which shattered on the ground when it landed. Against all odds, he did have a small amount of White Raffard’s Decoction left. Only a third of a bottle, which wasn’t much, but enough to stave off death for the moment. He passed it to Geralt, who knelt down beside Gaetan and raised it to his lips.

“Here, drink this.”

Gaetan complied, grimacing at the taste, and after a tense moment his breathing grew easier and the flow of blood from his wounds slowed. He still looked like death warmed over, but he was no longer in imminent danger of dying.

Lambert stood by uselessly as Geralt and Ciri bound the man’s wounds, his mind a million miles away. What the hell was a Cat School witcher doing in Nazair? He had been sure that their school’s legacy had died along with Aiden. Hell—Aiden himself had killed several of them. Still others had been assassinated or felled by the monsters they were contracted to kill. Lambert himself had slain one. He clenched his teeth as he remembered taking Jad Karadin’s smug head off his shoulders, and the fact that killing the man had brought him no relief.

“Should get him back to the castle. Keira can patch him up the rest of the way.” Geralt slung one of Gaetan’s arms over his shoulder and lifted him to his feet.

Gaetan promptly passed out.

“Damnit. Lambert—”

“Yeah, massive blood loss will do that to a guy,” Lambert quipped as he moved to take Gaetan’s dead weight. He grimaced. It was weird, touching him. It was unsettling, seeing that armor after everything he’d been through. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go down this road again.

“Do you think he has a horse?” Ciri asked as they pushed their way through the brambles.

“Had. It’s probably dead,” Lambert grunted. He nodded to their left, into the depths of the thicket. “Smelled something over there on our way in.”

Geralt sighed. “I’ll carry him on Roach.”

Lambert nodded, feeling some small measure of relief. The last thing in the world he wanted today was an unconscious Cat School witcher draped across his lap as they rode back to the city.

Ciri, at least, managed to remember what they had come for in the first place. She scraped a handful of scales off one of the slyzard corpses on their way back through the clearing where they had first picked up the trail, and dropped a bomb into the nest as she passed it.

Their horses were waiting exactly where they had left them. Geralt slung Gaetan’s unconscious form over Roach before climbing into the saddle. Lambert followed suit, patting his horse on the neck to soothe it when the sudden noise of the bomb exploding startled it.

They rode back toward the city at a much slower pace than they had ridden out. It was for the sake of the wounded, of course, so he wouldn’t be jostled too badly, but Lambert was grateful all the same. He wasn’t in any hurry to explain to Keira why he was turning up with yet another half-dead witcher in blue armor. It was like he attracted the fuckers. Four years of tragedy finally over and done with, and of course another one would fall straight into his lap.

Or Geralt’s, more accurately, but the point still stood. Lambert eyed Gaetan’s prone form slung across the saddle apprehensively.

“Geralt, how the hell do you know this guy?” he said suddenly, throwing all pretense to the wind. Fuck it. They were all thinking it. He hadn’t missed the significant glances Ciri had been throwing in his direction when she thought he wasn’t looking.

Geralt sighed heavily. “Long story.”

“Lucky for you, we’ve got a long ride. Fess up.”

“Not a pretty one, either.” Geralt frowned. “Told you this one already, actually, but I guess you had other things on your mind at the time. Few years back, I was riding through southern Velen and picked up a contract on a leshen. Town called Honorton—little place on the edge of the woods. Figured it couldn’t hurt to make some coin.

“When I got there, the place was deserted. Plenty of people, but no one alive. It was a massacre. Men, women, children, infants—everyone was dead. They weren’t killed by the leshen, either. Someone had hacked them to pieces. Found the leshen’s head on the floor in the ealdorman’s cottage, and a bloody pitchfork in the barn. Blood everywhere. Most of it human. Some of it unmistakably witcher.” Geralt frowned, glancing down at Gaetan. “Found a little girl hiding in the barn. She was the only one left alive. Gave me a cat’s head medallion and said the killer dropped it.”

Lambert sucked in air through his teeth. “Well. Shit.”

“Shit doesn’t even begin to cover it. Never seen anything like it.”

“Guessing you tracked him down?”

“Guessed right. Village had a sacred stone circle in the forest nearby. Followed him there and found him bleeding out on the ground, just like today.” Geralt shook his head. “By his account, the villagers had refused to pay him for the leshen, and when he wouldn’t leave they lured him into the barn and stabbed him in the back with a pitchfork. He snapped and killed every last one of them.”

“Except the girl,” Lambert muttered.

“Except the girl.”

Ciri, who up until this point had been listening with interest, shook her head in disbelief. “And you let him go?”

Geralt shrugged. “Wasn’t my place to judge the right or wrong of it. They don’t call me the Butcher of Blaviken for nothing.”

“Still…”

“Have you never done something in the heat of the moment you ended up regretting?”

Lambert and Ciri grimaced in tandem.

“That’s what I thought.” Geralt shifted in his saddle. “Anyway, the past is the past. Nothing we can do about it now.”

“Wonder what he was doing in Nazair,” Lambert mused. “There isn’t a lot of reason for a witcher to travel this way. Emhyr’s made us redundant.”

Ciri pursed her lips at the mention of her father.

“Guess we’ll find out when he wakes up.” Geralt nodded up ahead. “Almost back to the gates.”

Though still only partially rebuilt after having been razed to the ground in the first Nilfgaardian war, Assengard was a striking city to look at. The streets within the city walls were paved with blood-red chunks of cinnabar, which when viewed from above gave its footprint the appearance of a beating heart laced with pulsing arteries. The newly constructed houses and shops within it were the pinnacle of imperial finery. Even the ruins of the ones that had tumbled down were beautiful, in their own way—broken stone and rotting timbers choked out by enormous brambles of violet Nazairi roses. The flowers were rare, and nigh-impossible to cultivate in other parts of the Continent, but here they grew wild and bloomed almost year-round. The heady scent of the blossoms was a constant within the city walls, drifting on the breeze and permeating the very stones their horses trod upon.

The palace itself was no exception to Assengard’s beauty. It stood on the edge of a grand square, all high arches and fluted columns and expansive balconies open to the elements. There was no need for glass in the windows here; it was rare for the weather to be cold enough to justify the expense. In the square before the main gates sat a fountain, carved from a single enormous chunk of cinnabarite, filled with rather inaccurate depictions of dryads and naiads and sirens. Lambert had always privately thought the thing was gaudy as hell. He was grateful that today the spray of the water hid their little carved faces from his view. There was something in the depths of those sightless red eyes that unsettled him deeply.

Keira Metz, upon taking up residence in Assengard, had insisted that her chambers must have a stunning view. The emperor had provided, allotting her several spacious apartments that occupied the top two floors of one of the highest towers in the palace. That was all well and good for a sorceress; Keira simply used portals to come and go as she pleased. Unfortunately, for the witchers, it was nearly two hundred steps to the top.

Gaetan was dead weight. Geralt slung him over a shoulder and carried him up the first half of the spiral staircase, but after that point his endurance waned.

“Lambert,” he grunted, shifting Gaetan’s body. “Take him.”

“I’d rather not,” Lambert muttered under his breath, but he did it, almost losing his balance when he took the witcher’s weight. Gaetan was heavier than he looked. Blood was already seeping through the bandages bound around his leg and midriff. It smeared against Lambert’s cheek when he adjusted his grip, and he grimaced.

A hundred more steps to the top. Lambert’s heart was pounding in his ears from the exertion by the time he finally stepped up onto the landing and could attempt to catch his breath. Ciri darted ahead and held the door open. Lambert dragged himself through and dumped Gaetan on the first flat surface he found, which happened to be an elegant chaise by the fire. Keira was going to be pissed, but there was no way he was carrying him any further than that.

“You three certainly took your time,” Keira called from the next room. “I was expecting you back hours ago—” She broke off as she stepped through the doorway and spotted the wounded witcher steadily bleeding onto her expensive furniture and frowned, glancing at Lambert. “Another friend of yours?”

“Mine, actually,” Geralt said. “Wouldn’t exactly call him a friend, though. He’s wounded.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Keira said with dismay. “Was this your doing?”

Geralt shook his head. “Slyzards. Not sure what he was doing in our neck of the woods.”

“Well, I suppose we shall soon find out.” Keira strode across the room and began washing her hands in a basin of water. “And I surmise you’ve brought me yet another wounded witcher and forgotten what I actually sent you out for in the first place?”

“I didn’t forget!” Ciri interjected, digging in her pockets and holding out a handful of scales. “Will these do?”

Keira smiled, drying her hands on a rag. “You darling thing. What would I do without you?”

Ciri grinned.

“Take those to the laboratory and grind them up. Leave one whole on the glass plate so I can examine it later.”

Ciri nodded and darted off down the stairs.

Lambert leaned against the wall and crossed his arms as Keira sat on the edge of the chaise and examined Gaetan. “Think he’s going to make it?”

Keira scoffed. “Don’t be dramatic. I know for a fact that both of you have survived worse.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

“I would appreciate being able to focus, however, so if the two of you would be so kind as to give me space?” Keira wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps visit the baths. You reek of blood and horse.”

“Imagine that,” Lambert retorted.

“Lambert,” Geralt said in a warning tone. “Don’t push your luck. Let’s go.” He turned to Keira. “Mind letting us know when he’s awake?”

Keira shot him a reproachful glance. “Come now, what sort of witch do you take me for? Now, _out.”_

⁂

Though the steaming water was a balm on his aching joints, Lambert couldn’t bring himself to relax.

Life in Nazair had been painfully normal for a time. Calm. Stable. Stability wasn’t something that was easy to come by in a witcher’s life. Lambert hadn’t realized how much he’d craved it until he’d found himself in that brief bubble of quiet. He’d almost begun to take it for granted.

Almost.

And now…well. There was no telling what turmoil awaited when Gaetan opened his eyes. Lambert had encountered enough Cat School witchers in his long life to know that when they showed up things tended to be anything but stable. There were always scores to settle. Old ghosts that refused to give up their haunts. Shifting gravity that pulled him out of his life and into someone else’s.

He didn’t think he was ready to do that again.

After Aiden, after the Wild Hunt, after fighting the devil himself with his bare hands, hadn’t he earned some peace and quiet? Didn’t he deserve that much?

Destiny, cruel bitch that she was, seemed to have other plans for him.

He rose from the bath, dripping water onto the stone floor surrounding the pool. No point in pretending. At the very least, he’d washed the dirt from his hands and Gaetan’s blood from his skin. What he really needed was a stiff drink.

He dressed, not bothering to dry himself, in simple trousers and a loose-fitting black shirt. There was something to be said for wintering in the south—he could leave his hair dripping wet and it wouldn’t freeze to his skull the moment he stepped out of the river. There were braziers placed strategically throughout the baths dug into the rock beneath the palace, and thanks to a cleverly-devised system of pipes that steadily dripped water onto the coals, they produced a great deal of steam. Though the stairs and corridor that lead up from the baths to the kitchens were considerably cooler than the water itself, the air was still far warmer than the inside of Kaer Morhen had ever been.

The kitchens were practically deserted. The palace was largely empty this time of year, the majority of its regular occupants having relocated further south to the capital until the cooler months had passed. The absent noblemen had taken most of the cooks with them, leaving behind a skeleton crew to feed those who had either chosen or were forced to remain.

Lambert liked the kitchens. They were divided into two rooms, with a shared hearth that boasted a roaring fire between them. A heavy iron pot hung suspended over the flames, and in it a stew of venison and parsnips was bubbling steadily. Lambert could just make out the heady aroma of rosemary and longrube in the broth. A batch of pastries studded with walnuts and winter cherries sat cooling by the window. Lambert stole one when the cook turned her back to tend to the fire, and then rummaged through the cupboards until he found a bottle of vodka.

On the far end of the kitchen, opposite the fire, were several low wooden tables at which the servants who staffed the castle usually ate their meals. Lambert preferred to eat here when he could, rather than in Keira’s apartments or in the main hall. For one, he could be certain that the food he received here was both hot and fresh. For another, it was closer by far to the cellars where the wine and ale were stored. And, perhaps most importantly, no one expected him to talk to them. The kitchen staff tended not to acknowledge his presence, and for that he was grateful. He’d never exchanged so much as a word with the cook, but on most days a bowl of whatever happened to be cooking over the fire would find its way onto the table in front of him after he’d been sitting there a moment.

He found it hard to admit, even to himself, but part of the reason he liked spending time down here was that the layout reminded him of the kitchen at Kaer Morhen. The large hearth, open on both sides; the rough, splintery tables; the scent of stew cooking on the fire. It was comforting, in some small measure. He wasn’t sure when he’d finally come to think of Kaer Morhen as home—only that the revelation had come far too late.

He’d scraped his bowl clean and made a decent start on the bottle of vodka before he registered the sound of quiet footsteps approaching him from behind.

They weren’t as quiet as Aiden’s. Aiden had been almost impossibly light on his feet, and able to move near-silently. The tread _was_ unmistakably that of a witcher, though, and not one that Lambert knew. He stiffened, an unidentifiable feeling crawling around in his stomach, and tightened his grip on the vodka bottle.

A moment later, Gaetan dropped onto the bench across from him.

There was an uncomfortable silence as the two of them sized each other up. Lambert did his damnedest not to display any emotion.

“Sorceress said I’d probably find you here,” Gaetan said finally. His voice, now that it wasn’t distorted with pain, came out sounding vaguely pinched—as if he’d had his nose broken a dozen or so times over the years and it hadn’t healed properly.

“Keira.” Damn her. She never could keep her nose in her own business.

“Keira,” Gaetan amended. “I wanted to say thanks for the save. I probably would’ve died out there if you didn’t have your potions stocked.”

Lambert shrugged. “More Geralt’s decision to save you than mine.”

“Yeah, I owe him one too. Owe him two, come to think of it. Second time he’s saved my life now.” Gaetan shook his head. “One of these days I’ll think of a way to pay him back.”

“He likes to play knight. Don’t take it personally.” Lambert took a swig of the vodka, grimacing as it burned its way down his throat.

“Mind sharing? I’m starved.”

Lambert slid the bottle of vodka across the table. He hesitated for a moment, and then handed over the scone as well. He didn’t have an appetite for it any longer.

Gaetan went for the liquor first, taking a long draught and then making a disgusted face when he swallowed.

Lambert snorted. “Nazairi basil. They infuse it into the vodka here. Don’t ask me why. It takes a while to get used to.”

“And I thought the shit they drank in Redania was foul.” Gaetan grimaced, shaking his head. “Still, thanks.”

Lambert nodded in acknowledgment. Gaetan ate like a starving man, which was something Lambert could sympathize with. It was a habit all of them picked up, sooner or later. It was hard to take the time to enjoy a meal when there was a good chance of something attacking him in the middle of it. Or of the innkeep, having finally taken notice of his golden eyes and silver medallion, throwing him out on his ass in the gutter.

And speaking of medallions, he thought to himself grimly, there was no way Gaetan hadn’t noticed his. The other man probably thought he was being sly, but Lambert hadn’t missed his wandering gaze. It wasn’t a question of if he was going to bring it up. It was a question of when.

The answer turned out to be as soon as he was finished stuffing his face. Gaetan took another swig of the vodka, frowning at the taste, and set the bottle down on the table with a heavy thunk.

“I can’t help but notice you’ve got two medallions.”

Direct. Lambert stared him down. “That’s right.”

“Cat’s clothing looks awful strange on you, Wolf.” Gaetan’s expression was unreadable. “Where’d you get it?”

“It belonged to a man named Aiden.” Lambert found himself wishing he was wearing his swordbelts. He felt naked without them.

“He dead?”

“Twice over. Long story.” Lambert practically spat the words. “Get to the point.”

“Alright, fine.” Gaetan leaned forward. “Did you kill him?”

Lambert gripped his thigh, his fingers digging hard into the muscle. Damn him. Damn his traitorous heart.

“I might as well have. But if you’re asking who put a sword through his heart and a crossbow bolt in his eye, Jad Karadin’s your man.”

Gaetan’s mouth twisted. “That son of a whore. I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

“You’re a little late to the party,” Lambert said joylessly. “I did that myself. Five years past.”

Gaetan spat on the floor. “Good riddance.” He folded his arms and looked at Lambert resentfully. “It seems the Path you walk is littered with the corpses of my brothers.”

“Not by my choice,” Lambert growled. “Are we going to have a problem?”

Gaetan’s eyes narrowed. Lambert’s fingers twitched toward the sign of Aard under the table, but then Gaetan relaxed and held up his hands. “Guess not. You wouldn’t’ve gone after Karadin if Aiden wasn’t important to you.”

“Maybe I just wanted to watch the fucker die.”

Gaetan shook his head. “Anger can make a man do some pretty fucking stupid things, but I knew the whoreson and he was careful. You’d have to be pretty persistent to sniff him out. Not the best way to find out you’re the last of your school left, I’ll admit, but if it was down to him and me I probably would’ve ended up killing him myself.” He took another pull on the vodka bottle. “ ‘Sides, I’m sure Geralt told you about how we met. I guess I’m not in a position to judge.”

Lambert regarded him silently.

“Anyway.” Gaetan slid the vodka bottle back across the table. “It turns out bleeding to death is exhausting, and your sorceress kind of did a number on me patching me up. I’m gonna see if I can find a bed to fall into. Thanks for the drink.”

Lambert nodded. Gaetan stood, swinging his legs over the bench, and left the kitchen just as quietly as he’d entered.

Lambert let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and raised a trembling hand to Aiden’s medallion, which hung cold and motionless over his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gaetan's an odd one, and I have a lot of conflicting feelings about him and his history. It's been a long night, so I don't really have anything of note to say beyond that, except: man it's nice to be on an update schedule again. I hope you guys liked the chapter <3


	3. Tangled Threads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by [bookscorpion!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion)

Steel met steel with a vicious clang that Lambert could feel in his teeth.

With a grunt, he broke the blade lock, ducked, and spun, parrying high to catch Ciri’s riposte. Practiced motions. He’d been doing this ever since he was a fledgling, suffering under Vesemir’s tutelage. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the creak and sway of the pendulum as he darted around it.

Ciri jumped back, creating distance between the two of them, keeping the point of her sword trained on his chest. Lambert grinned. Good. She was learning.

He lunged forward, dropping to his knees at the last moment and sliding under the arc of her blade. He threw his sword arm up—

The blade passed through empty air.

Lambert grinned wider, drawing the sign of Aard and throwing it behind him. There was a pop as Ciri flickered back into existence, and then a shriek as the blast caught her full force and sent her tumbling backward. Her sword skidded across the stones of the courtyard and came to a halt several meters away.

Lambert held her at the point of his sword. “Three-nothing.”

Ciri got to her feet, dusting herself off, and went to retrieve her blade. “That wasn’t fair! We said no signs.”

“Did we?” Lambert teased, feigning ignorance. “I don’t remember that.”

“You bully.” Ciri punched him on the shoulder. “I’m going to beat you one of these days.”

“Looking forward to it.” Lambert ruffled her hair. He walked to the edge of the courtyard and sat on the ground next to Geralt. “You’re up. Maybe she’ll have better luck against the famous White Wolf.”

Geralt got to his feet with a grunt and stretched. “Mind your stance, Ciri. That’s why he knocked you over so easily.”

“You tell her, Papa Vesemir.”

Geralt shot Lambert a reproachful glance and then turned, drawing his sword.

Lambert tuned out the sounds of the two of them sparring and Geralt’s intermittent pointers and words of encouragement. Pulling a whetstone from his pocket, he drew his silver sword and began to sharpen it.

The sword had once been Vesemir’s. Lambert had not been as kind to it as he should have been, and he did feel some small measure of guilt over that. The old man had always been meticulous with his blades. They were his livelihood. Lambert had rarely been of a similar mind, but he’d grown to see the wisdom in Vesemir’s words over the years. Even when he neglected his own steel, he made an effort to keep the silver honed to a razor’s edge. It was the least he could do for the old man’s memory.

Sharpening the blade was a mechanical task. It kept his hands occupied, but his mind roamed freely as he drew the stone along the sharp of the blade. It was something he’d picked up from Aiden. He had always said that cleaning his blade helped him think.

So lost in thought was he that at first he didn’t notice that there was an extra person in the courtyard. A figure, standing in the shadows of the covered paths that surrounded it, watching the sparring match appraisingly.

The vaguest outline of twin swords. Gaetan.

Lambert set the whetstone aside and gritted his teeth. He should have known he’d come crawling out of the woodwork sooner or later. It was a big castle, but not so big that they could have avoided each other indefinitely. He’d learnt that the hard way the first time he’d wintered here and made the mistake of picking a fight with Keira.

“We’ve got company,” Lambert muttered, and Geralt and Ciri immediately ceased twirling around each other.

“Sorry,” Gaetan held up his hands, stepping out into the sunlight. “Just wanted to watch a little.” He turned to Ciri. “You fight like a witcher.”

“Yes?” Ciri said, raising an eyebrow. “I am one.”

“Never met a witcheress before, but I’ll admit you’ve got skill.”

Ciri grinned. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Gaetan folded his arms. “Can’t help but notice our medallions match. Based on the way you fight, I would’ve pegged you for School of the Wolf.”

“I am.” Ciri touched her medallion with her fingertips. “I stole this from a man who made his living killing witchers. I’ve no idea who it once belonged to.”

“Interesting.” Gaetan raised an eyebrow at Geralt. “What about you? Does anyone who joins your little hansa have to wear a dead Cat’s medallion?”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Geralt gestured at the chain around his own neck. “I’ve just got the one.”

“Fair enough.” Gaetan rolled his shoulder, rubbing at the joint. “What about a little friendly sparring match? I’m feeling a hell of a lot better, but I’m stiff as a board. Could use an excuse to practice my bladework, since apparently it’s not up to standards.”

“Some other time,” Lambert cut in, sheathing his sword and getting to his feet. “Right now I’m more interested in why you’re here and what you want.”

Gaetan’s face darkened. “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I said I wanted to make leather from the slyzard hides, would you?”

Lambert stared back at him evenly, arms crossed.

“Fine,” Gaetan said after a moment, with a furtive glance around the courtyard. “But not here, understand? I’ve been around long enough to know walls have ears in places like these.”

“Dusk, then,” Geralt offered. “In the gatekeep?”

“Too public,” Lambert said, shaking his head. “The basement, underneath the baths. There’s a furnace down there they use to heat the water. Thing makes a shitload of noise, and it’s hot as hell to boot. No one’ll bother us.”

Gaetan nodded. “Fine. I get the sense that I’m not exactly welcome, so in the meantime I guess I’ll try to find a decent armorsmith. Got any recommendations?”

“Take the street to the left of the city gates, two right turns and then down the alley. There’s a woman there that does beautiful work. Aen Seidhe.” Ciri smiled and gestured at her own armor. “I had a full set made when we arrived. She’s quick, and she doesn’t ask questions.”

“My kind of lady.” Gaetan grinned at her. “Thanks.”

Gaetan sauntered off toward the main gate, whistling a tune to himself. The three Wolves stood together and watched him go.

⁂

Though he’d been the one who suggested it, Lambert had come to regret their choice of meeting place.

He, Geralt, and Ciri had excused themselves one by one to the baths so as to avoid drawing suspicion. From there, the thick clouds of steam had obscured their descent into the bowels of the castle.

The mechanism that heated the water was on the lowest level, deep beneath the surface of the earth. Lambert had never seen anything like it in his life, and he’d lived longer than most. It squatted in the center of its lair, black as sin and belching smoke and flame. There was a wide chute connecting the maw of the furnace to the floors above, through which servants fed it coals day and night, and another enormous chimney that directed the smoke it produced out of the castle, lest everyone within the walls suffocate on its fumes. A series of pipes spread out from its top, running through holes that had been cut in the floor of the room above, creaking and banging every now and then as the heat of the steam they carried forced the metal to expand and contract.

It was impressive, Lambert had to admit. Leave it to the Nilfgaardians to come up with something as crazy as this. The whoresons loved their hot water more than anything else, and even if they couldn’t agree on much else, Lambert was, for once, of a similar mind.

That being said, it was louder than a fiend in heat and the space in which they now found themselves was sweltering hot. Lambert was glad that he’d stripped down to his shirt and leggings, but even without several thick layers of leather he was sweating buckets. The fabric of his shirt was already soaked through and clinging to his skin. He couldn’t tell if it was wet with steam or sweat. Probably both.

Geralt and Ciri didn’t look much better. Lambert, at least, had the advantage of not having much hair. The both of them looked like drowned white rats.

Gaetan was already there and waiting for them. He, too, appeared to be feeling the effects of the heat. His face was flushed a deep red, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

“Nice choice of locale,” he remarked as they drew near. “Real charming place.”

“Hey, it’s private.” Lambert shrugged. “Never said it was comfortable.” He leaned against the wall, putting as much space between himself and the furnace as possible, and crossed his arms. “So, what’s the big secret?”

“You sure cut straight to the chase, don’t you?” Gaetan shook his head. “Fine.” He gestured for Geralt and Ciri to sit.

Ciri accepted, kneeling on the stone floor. Geralt remained standing, staring back at him evenly.

Gaetan shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He wiped away a trickle of sweat with the back of his hand. “ ‘m guessing you’re already familiar with the history of my school?”

Lambert nodded along with Geralt, grimacing. Oh, he knew. He knew all too well.

Ciri shook her head. “Vesemir never told me much about other witcher schools. He was coddling me, I expect.” She glanced at the others. “A short explanation, if you don’t mind?”

“The Cat School used to be a lot like ours,” Lambert said, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “But the world is harsh, and they got greedy. They started taking out contracts on people instead of monsters. Turned assassin, and then turned traitor.”

Geralt nodded. “I wasn’t much older than you are now when this happened, but King Radowit of Kaedwen decided to host a witcher tournament. Unbeknownst to us, he’d bribed the Cat School witchers who attended to murder everyone from the Wolf School. He never liked the fact that Kaer Morhen was within his kingdom’s borders.” He frowned. “It was a massacre. When the dust settled, all the Wolves were dead. Radowit turned on the Cats and had his archers shoot every last one of them. I was the only one who survived.”

Ciri’s eyes were wide. “How did you escape?”

“Ermion teleported me out.”

“Uncle Mousesack!” Ciri smiled fondly. “Is that how you became friends?”

“Uh-huh, something like that.” Geralt turned to Gaetan. “I leave anything out?”

Gaetan sighed. “Yeah, that pretty much covers it. Not all of us were monsters, you know. Aiden had troubles, but he was a good man. Not sure if I can say the same for myself, but I guess that’s a moot point.

“I was headed south, to Ebbing. Figured there probably weren’t many Cat School witchers left. I didn’t realize until I talked to your friend here that I was the last one.” He scuffed the floor with the toe of his boot. “The old fortress is abandoned—has been for decades. And it’s full of witcher secrets. There are things buried there that could spell big trouble for us if anyone ever found them. I wanted to dig them up and destroy them while I still had breath in me.”

Geralt looked like he’d bitten into rancid meat. “Wasn’t the seat of the Cat School…”

“Stygga Castle. Yeah.”

Ciri blanched. Geralt’s expression soured further.

“Y’know, those faces ain’t exactly encouraging.”

Geralt sighed. “Ever hear of a mage named Vilgefortz?”

“Never paid much mind to mages.”

“Should have paid mind to this one. He tore half the Continent apart trying to get to Ciri here.” Geralt gestured in her direction. “Damn near succeeded, too. He actually helped Emhyr var Emreis rise to Nilfgaard’s throne, and in exchange Emhyr had promised to give him the North. Vilgefortz probably would have turned on him after that, but he never got the opportunity. I killed him during the siege of Stygga Castle.”

“Sounds like I don’t have to know who he is, then.” Gaetan shrugged.

“You’re not seeing the problem, are you?” Ciri said. “Vilgefortz made Stygga his home. He reworked the stone so it better suited his purposes. He was cunning and ruthless. I doubt there were any secrets hidden in that castle that he didn’t find.”

Gaetan smiled, but there was no warmth behind it. “You underestimate my brothers.”

“The stuff that’s hidden there.” Lambert frowned. “What you’re saying is that anyone who found it could use it to make more witchers, if they were smart enough.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”

“It’s worse than that,” Geralt said grimly. “Assuming you’re telling the truth, I can think of at least five people off the top of my head who would pay through the teeth for an army of mutant soldiers. Think about what that would mean for the rest of us.”

“Why would I lie?” Gaetan made an open gesture. “You’ve already seen me at my worst. I can’t exactly fall much further than I did at Honorton. I’ve murdered. I’ve stolen when I needed to. I’ve got a shit temper, and I’ve done a lot of things I regret. But I’m not fucking lying about this.”

“Why do you need us?” Lambert raised an eyebrow. “You were headed there alone in the first place. It doesn’t sound like you planned on bringing anyone else along.”

“Yeah, but Ebbing is part of Nilfgaard now, and let’s just say the empire and I don’t exactly get along. It’s safer if I travel in a group.”

Lambert snorted. “So what, you want us to be your bodyguards?”

“Camouflage. Not just that, though. It’ll take more than just me to open the stronghold. I was gonna try to rig something together, but it’s easier if I can bring another witcher. Or two.”

“Three,” Ciri said, crossing her arms.

“Appreciate it, but I need someone who can cast signs.”

Ciri rolled her eyes and gestured at herself.

Gaetan raised an eyebrow. “Well now I’ve _gotta_ fight you sometime.”

“Later.” Lambert held up a hand. “So basically you want us to ride to Ebbing with you, help you dig up this relic, and destroy it?”

“That’s the idea. Yeah.”

Lambert glanced at Geralt, and then Ciri. There could be no doubt that Geralt would end up saying yes out of his own overwrought sense of morality. Ciri would probably follow his example, so that left Lambert as the undecided party.

“We need to talk about this,” Lambert said, cutting off Geralt before he could start speaking. “Give us some time to mull things over.”

“Do what you like.” Gaetan wiped his forehead on his sleeve again. “I can’t take much more of this heat, so I’m gonna get out of here. Fair warning, though—I’m not waiting forever. No matter what you end up deciding, I’m leaving by last light tomorrow.” He made for the exit and stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking back. “Don’t take too long.”

Lambert felt something when Gaetan’s eyes met his that settled uncomfortably in his gut. 

He did his best to ignore it.

⁂

Why him?

Lambert ground his teeth as he climbed the many stairs to the top of the wall of the inner keep. It was a long way to go for some peace and quiet, but of all the places in Assengard he’d stormed off to over the years, it was the most private. The guard patrols were few and far between this time of year, given that most of the nobles in occupancy had vacated the castle for the winter. There wasn’t much left to protect.

And there was also a large, open space at the top, opposite the gatekeep. Lambert could reliably find a torch or two burning in sconces there, and the view over the city was unmatched—except, perhaps, for the view from Keira’s tower.

There was something about it that reminded him of Kaer Morhen. Of walking the walls in the night, looking out at a sky salted with stars as the chill wind whipped through his hair. Listening to the sounds of birds and deer rustling in the underbrush. Hooves crunching through a layer of snow and ice. The ominous calling of a nightjar. A wolf howling at the moon.

Assengard wasn’t the same. The illusion was muddied by the unmistakable sounds of a living city—crying infants, water splashing in the fountain, boots on blood-red cobblestone—but the night breeze kissed his skin just the same. The crackling of the torches as they burned was familiar. The smoke drifting on the air was familiar. The creaking of scaffolding struggling to hold up a thick stone wall was familiar.

It was almost enough.

He sat on the parapet, letting his legs dangle out over the void, and pulled Aiden’s medallion from his shirt, rubbing it absentmindedly.

“What do you think?” he murmured after several minutes of silence. “Is he telling the truth? Should I go with him? Is that what you would have wanted me to do?”

The wind said nothing. It only snatched the words from his lips as he spoke them and carried them away, over thatched roofs and crumbling ruins bound up in rose brambles.

Lambert pinched his nose and groaned. “It has a way of dragging you back in, kicking and screaming, doesn’t it? The Path, I mean. No matter how hard I try to leave, I keep finding myself back on it. It makes no damn sense.”

Crying infants. Splashing water. Faint, off-key singing in a tavern somewhere below.

“And this guy,” Lambert continued, making a sweeping gesture. “Who is he, anyway? I can’t get a read on him. Guess it’s probably a good thing he remembers you fondly. One wrong word and I probably would’ve killed him. And then your school really would be gone forever. No more Cats.”

Wind whistling through the parapets. Torches guttering and then surging higher.

“And would that really have been such a bad thing? Never made any secret of thinking the world‘d be better off without us. You…well, you were the exception. And now you’re dead, so who gives a shit?”

Three seconds of deafening silence. A scuffle in an alleyway. A hawk crying overhead.

Lambert chewed on his words a moment. “But, if he’s telling the truth…” He sighed heavily. “Then there _will_ be more of us. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. And that’s the last thing anyone needs. Least of all me.”

A young woman laughing. A blacksmith’s hammer on metal. The rattling of a cart’s wheels on stone.

“You mentioned him once, didn’t you?” Lambert mused. “Gaetan. You said I would’ve liked him. It seemed like you liked him. Enough to want to know he was still alive, at least. I guess that counts for something.” He shook his head. “This is the last fucking thing I want to do right now, Aiden. It’s hard. It’s so fucking hard. Every step he takes reminds me of you. Every time I see that armor in the corner of my eye for a second I—”

He broke off, swallowing hard. “Doesn’t matter. This…do I have a choice at all? Would you hate me if I made the selfish one?”

The wind said nothing.

⁂

“Alright,” Keira said abruptly later that night. “Enough is enough.”

“What?” Lambert mumbled from where he lay with his head between her thighs, pulling back and wiping his mouth on his hand. “Not good?”

“Your performance, as always, is satisfactory. However, I can tell your heart’s not truly in it. Come,” she said, patting the spot on the bed next to her. “Out with it.”

Lambert flopped onto the sheets beside her, looking blankly up at the heavy green and turquoise brocade of the bed’s canopy. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

“You’ve not been yourself since the three of you brought that witcher to the castle.”

“Guess not.”

Keira sighed and stretched like a cat, rising to pour two goblets of wine from the pitcher that sat on a small table just opposite the bed. She passed one to Lambert, and he hummed gratefully.

“If it’s a matter of taste, I’m certain there are a number of courtesans who would be more than willing—”

Lambert waved her off. “Definitely not that. It’s not you.”

“But it is _him_ ,” Keira said thoughtfully, swirling the wine in her glass.

“I’m not—”

It was Keira’s turn to wave him off. “That isn’t what I meant. It isn’t a question of the man himself, but what he represents. He’s entered the coop and brought the wolves in with him. If you’ll pardon my metaphor.”

Lambert drained his goblet in a single draught and set it aside, saying nothing.

“It’s strange, the way they’re drawn to you,” Keira mused. “Almost as if…well, as if you were bound by destiny.”

“Horse shit.” Lambert, having grown bored of examining the bed hangings, stared into the brazier in the center of the tower room instead. The fire popped as it consumed a pocket of sap in one of the logs.

“It has always puzzled me that you would dismiss the idea so easily, being a child of surprise yourself.”

Lambert could feel Keira’s gaze on his skin. He shrugged. “Not exactly a rarity.”

“Hmm.” Keira set her glass aside and rolled over, shifting closer to him under the covers. “Do you know why it was that Cintra fell?”

“Nilfgaard got greedy.”

“That is the reason for the war itself, but not for the fall of the kingdom. What I asked you was not why Cintra was attacked, but why Nilfgaard’s armies succeeded in razing it to the ground where before it had stood proudly for centuries. Do you know the cause?”

“I’m sure you’re about to enlighten me.” Lambert steadfastly refused to tear his gaze from the flames.

“Pride,” Keira said simply. “Pride and arrogance. Calanthe, the Lioness—Ciri’s grandmother—could not bear the thought of losing her. She renenged on her promise. She sought to cheat destiny. Do you know what happened then?”

“No.”

“Destiny does not like to be cheated. You’ve known me for half a decade now, Lambert. I may be a witch, but I am not a superstitious woman.” She sighed. “In attempting to revoke the Law of Surprise, Calanthe doomed herself, her bloodline, and her kingdom. Had she not done this, Cintra might well have survived. It would have remained one of the last great strongholds of the north. Its forces could have repelled the Nilfgaardian invasion. There might never have been a Sodden Hill.”

Lambert finally rolled to face her. “What’s your point?”

Keira’s eyes met his, piercing green pools that matched the shade of the enormous jade soaking tub that sat behind a screen on the other side of the bed perfectly.

“What you scoff at, what you attempt to avoid, what you try to steal back from destiny, it will unleash upon you and yours a hundredfold. I don’t know this man. I don’t know what he desires, but he’s in pursuit of something. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you found yourself tangled up in the threads of it by week’s end.”

“I’m in control.”

“Are you?” Keira cocked her head. “Were you in control when you and Aiden first crossed paths? Were you in control when you met the Man of Glass at the crossroads?”

Lambert looked away. “What would you have me do?”

Keira rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to order you around like some sort of trained bear. You must do what you feel in your heart is right. I only hope that you don’t lose sight of yourself this time.”

“I don’t understand,” Lambert said, shaking his head. “Are you trying to cut me loose?”

“If I wanted you gone, you’d know it.” Keira’s smile didn’t succeed in making the sadness in her eyes. “But this is the way it’s always been. The two of us flit around each other like moths around a flame. You pass in and out of my life, I pass in and out of yours. Attempting to break that cycle would only succeed in both of us getting burnt.”

“And what if I don’t want to flit away yet?”

“Then you’re welcome in my bed for as long as that lasts.” Keira’s smile was warmer this time. “Perhaps longer.”

Lambert gently brushed a stray golden hair away from her face. Something flared inside him as his fingertips traced the curves of her, brushing down her shoulders, her waist, her hips. Something warm; sweet and yet painful; joyful and yet melancholy.

It nearly overwhelmed him as their lips met, and the two of them melted into each other in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lambert is in over his head, as usual.


	4. Inviting the Wrath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read, as always, by bookscorpion,!

Morning dawned grey and feeble.

Lambert slipped out of bed, doing his best not to wake Keira, who was still sleeping peacefully, tangled up in silk sheets. He dressed, tugged on his boots, and splashed some cold water on his face from the pitcher on the washstand before beginning the long descent from her apartments to the bottom of the tower.

Geralt and Ciri had also been afforded a suite within the castle. Emhyr might not have been able to convince his daughter to take up her birthright, but that certainly hadn't stopped him from trying. Regardless of how many times she refused his requests, he still insisted on her being treated as the heiress to the empire. Lambert knew it annoyed the shit out of her, but her position definitely had its perks.

This particular perk came in the form of one of the largest apartments in the castle. Two enormous bedchambers sat on either end, connected by a common dining area. There were several smaller rooms connected to the main chamber: a private bath, a small pantry, and even a tiny library. It also boasted a large, open balcony, and scattered throughout the rooms were carafes of wine and little silver platters of fruit and cheese.

It was bigger and more lavish by far than Keira's rooms, with the exception that the balcony overlooked the back of the palace rather than the city. The Amell Mountains were visible through the open archways, but only just.

Geralt and Ciri, of course, had promptly set up a witchers' workshop in the midst of all the finery, shattering the illusion of grandeur.

Scattered across the polished oak dining table were bundles of dried herbs, monster claws, and phials of freshly-bottled potions. At some point, one of them must have spilt Quebrith onto the wood, and the bright yellow pigment had stained it permanently. Someone had brought up a sharpening wheel from the armory and placed it by the fire, and the fine glint of metal dust in the morning light told Lambert that it had been used quite a bit. Books littered every flat surface—some open, others bookmarked with scraps of paper, still others left upside down.

It was almost like home. All it needed was some scaffolding, a few shitty murals featuring famous witchers, and the musty scent of fermenting potatoes.

Geralt and Ciri were already awake and breakfasting on an array of dishes that had been sent up from the kitchens. The both of them had always been early risers. Lambert had barely slept at all.

He grunted a greeting and dropped into the nearest chair. Geralt nodded in acknowledgment and pushed a plate of bacon and sausages across the table.

“Thanks.” Lambert picked at the food, tearing off the end of a piece of bacon and chewing on it slowly. “So—are we gonna talk about what Gaetan said last night?”

“You’re awfully eager.”

“I kind of have to be. He didn’t exactly give us a lot of time to decide.”

“I think we should go with him,” Ciri said matter-of-factly, cutting into an egg tart.

Geralt raised an eyebrow. “Kind of surprised to hear that from you, given where he’s asking us to go.”

Ciri shrugged. “Vilgefortz is dead. It isn’t the castle’s fault he decided to spread his stench all over it. And—Gaetan is one of us, isn’t he? Why shouldn’t we help him?”

“Not exactly one of us,” Lambert said, frowning. “None of us know him—not really,” he said, shooting Geralt a look. “The stuff you had to say about him wasn’t exactly encouraging. For all we know, this could be some kind of trap.”

Geralt shook his head. “Doubt it. I won’t defend his actions in Honorton, but it seems like he has a code and he sticks to it. Even paid me back for returning his medallion after I threatened to kill him myself. He’s flawed, but he’s not evil.”

“This is how I see it,” Ciri said through a mouthful of eggs. “When I was fleeing the Hunt, you all fought to keep them from taking me. People who hadn’t seen me since I was a child. People who had never even met me. They didn’t fight out of love for me—how could they? They didn’t know me. They did it because they felt it was right. When one of our number is in trouble, it’s our duty to help them.”

“Gotta go with Ciri on this one,” Geralt said, taking back the plate of sausages. “She’s right.”

Lambert grimaced. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“And,” Geralt continued with a significant look in his direction, “you kind of owe me one for the Karadin thing.”

Lambert sucked air through his teeth. “You just had to play that card, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t ask questions then. I just helped you. Kind of came back to bite me in the ass later, too.”

“That’s the understatement of the fucking year.” Lambert buried his head in his hands. “Fine. I’m not exactly thrilled about it, but yeah. I guess I owe you one.”

“Ebbing’s less than a fortnight’s ride from here,” Ciri said, leaning over to pat him on the shoulder. “It will be over before you know it.”

Somehow, Lambert doubted that.

⁂

Lambert, Geralt, Ciri, and Gaetan rode out from Assengard at dusk.

It had taken the better part of the day to gather supplies, prepare their mounts, and dress themselves like witchers once more. Lambert had a hell of a time squeezing into his armor these days. He’d gotten soft. A few weeks with an unending supply of good, hot food and more free time on his hands than he knew what to do with had left him several pounds heavier than he’d been when he’d ridden into the city just after Samhain.

Gaetan was oddly taciturn as they traveled, given his earlier attempts to befriend the three of them. Lambert found himself wondering what exactly was going on inside his head. He barely said a word the first day of their ride, and hardly two on the second. Finally, Lambert grew tired of waiting for the other boot to drop and broke the silence himself.

“Why’d you shave your head?”

“Huh?” Gaetan looked up distractedly from where he sat oiling his sword by the fire.

“It’s starting to grow back, so you’re not bald.” Lambert gestured at his own receding hairline. “Why’d you shave it off?”

“Slyzards,” Gaetan said simply, continuing to work oil onto the silver with an old rag. “Sure have bad luck with ‘em, don’t I? It was one of my first contracts as a full-fledged witcher. I didn’t dodge fast enough, and the bastard burnt half the hair off my pretty little head.” He turned, indicating the faint shadow of a long-healed burn scar that started on the occipital bone and went down the back of his neck. “Nothing grows there now. I figured I’d better do the rest to match.”

“Hard to stay pretty in our line of work.” Lambert grimaced.

“Tell that to your friends over there,” Gaetan said with a jerk of his head. “Sure doesn’t seem to bother them.”

There wasn’t a single one amongst the four of them whose face wasn’t marred by some sort of souvenir of the witchering trade. Lambert’s own temple sported a series of claw marks, left behind by an exceptionally memorable bruxa. Geralt and Ciri bore matching wounds that skipped over their left eyes and bit deeply into the flesh beneath. Gaetan had others himself—one bisecting his eyebrow, another that crossed his face from one tear duct to the corner of his jaw. There were probably dozens more underneath his armor Lambert hadn’t seen yet. Scars were a fact of life on the Path. There was no way to avoid them. Any witcher with unmarred skin was either too young to have tasted real combat or far too dangerous for Lambert to ever want to cross paths with him.

Lambert shook out his bedroll and sat on the opposite side of the fire, grateful that the wool at least kept the dampness of the earth from seeping into his trousers. He tugged one of his boots off with a grunt and shook a few pieces of loose gravel from it before tossing it aside.

“There’s something you’re not telling us, isn’t there?” he said in a low voice, watching Gaetan’s face intently as the flames licked the air between them. “Geralt and Ciri trust too easily. There’s something about this whole thing that stinks to me. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but mark my words—if you cross us, if this is a trap—there’ll be hell to pay.”

Gaetan looked back at him, a challenge in his eyes, his expression unreadable. “You really don’t trust me, do you?”

“Experience has made me wary of witchers I don’t know. Rightfully.”

“And so what? You think I’m leading you into a pit of lions to be torn apart and eaten?” Gaetan scoffed. “No.”

“You don’t exactly seem like you’re thrilled to be here either.”

Gaetan rolled his eyes. “I’m not. Would you be? There’s a reason I haven’t been back to Stygga in decades. Done everything I can to avoid the place.”

“Care to tell me why?”

“No, but I can tell I’m not getting out of this without it, so I guess I’ll tell you anyway.” Gaetan frowned, his nose wrinkling like he’d unexpectedly stepped in chort shit. “You better listen close, because I’m not saying any of this twice. You must’ve been close to Aiden—you wouldn’t be wearing his medallion around otherwise. Didn’t he ever tell you anything about how things worked at the School of the Cat?”

Lambert shrugged. “He mentioned a few things here and there, but he didn’t like talking about it.”

“Gee. I wonder why.” Gaetan shook his head. “Fine, then. You’ve studied monsters like any of the rest of us. I’m not talking about fiends and nekkers”—he said, holding up a hand—“I’m talking about men. The rest of the schools always liked to act superior to us, but I’d bet my balls you’ve taken on just as many contracts on humans as any of the witchers from my school. You just didn’t know what you were signing up for at the time.”

“I’ve killed my fair share,” Lambert muttered.

“Have a good long think about what turns men into monsters. The things that strip them of their empathy. Their emotions. Their morals. No, I’m not talking about the mutagens. You know as well as I do that the stuff people say about us is horse shit. It’s just something we go along with to keep up appearances.”

“You’re talking about nature versus nurture,” Geralt said, startling Lambert, who hadn’t seen him sit down.

“Yeah. Specifically, the nurture part. When they put us through the Trials, the mutagens break down our bodies and rebuild them into something different. The credo of the School of the Cat was to do the same to the mind.”

“Aiden said once that it was…the word he used was ‘austere.’” Lambert’s fingers strayed toward the chains around his neck. “He said you weren’t really allowed to keep possessions.”

Gaetan shook his head. “That was the least of our problems. You know the School of the Cat was originally founded by elves?”

“Heard rumors, yeah.” Geralt nodded.

“The philosophy they based our education on was Aen Elle, not Aen Seidhe. Texts that had survived the Conjunction. Tortures you can’t even imagine. They would tie us down and beat us. Force-feed us poisons that don’t exist on the Continent. Usually I would black out from the pain. There’s one I do remember—I think they extracted it from a fish that can only be caught in Ofier. It felt like every nerve in my body was on fire. It was worse than the Grasses. After a few hours it started to paralyze my diaphragm and I felt like I was drowning in my own lungs. They left me that way, fighting for every breath, sure that I would die if I fell asleep—for three days.”

“And you survived,” Lambert said flatly.

“Plenty of others who didn’t,” Gaetan growled. “And even more than they ‘culled’—the ones who were weak, or acted on their emotions. There was a boy who shared a bed with me, when I was still a fledgling. They didn’t want us to have anything we could call our own, see. Having somewhere that was safe, something that belonged to you—that gave you the strength to fight back. They took away every comfort that they could.”

He stared into the flames, anger evident in the line of his brow. “He vanished one night. I know that they took him. I know what they must have done to him. I searched for him for weeks. Never found a trace.” He shook his head. “My instructors acted like he never existed.”

“How cruel,” Ciri gasped.

“They did plenty worse than that,” Gaetan said grimly. “Don’t make me relive it. The point is that they did those things because they wanted to break us. To turn us into mindless killing machines. We weren’t supposed to stray from the Path. We were supposed to be impartial. Efficient. When the going got tough—and believe me, it fucking did—you either broke and let them put you back together, or you got very, very smart and managed to trick them into thinking they’d succeeded. Your friend Jad Karadin did the former,” he said to Lambert, his lip curling in disdain at the mention of Karadin’s name. “Aiden and I did the latter.”

Lambert swallowed hard. “And Stygga?”

“What do you think? Would you want to go back to a place things like that happened to you? I don’t give a fuck if the castle’s abandoned. There’re more than enough ghosts in there for me to avoid it for a hundred miles in either direction. Thankfully, Nilfgaard’s made that easy enough.” Gaetan sighed. “The shit end of the stick is that now that I _need_ to go back it’s a real pain in my ass to get through the blockades.”

The wind whipped up and the fire sputtered. Geralt prodded at the logs with the end of a branch, embers crumbling into ash. “We’ll manage.”

Gaetan folded his arms. “You seem awful sure about that.”

“We have a permanent letter of safe conduct,” Lambert said grimly. “We’ll make it across the Sylte.”

“How the hell’d you get something like that?” Gaetan raised an eyebrow.

“Doesn’t matter.” Lambert’s tone made it clear that there was no point in further questioning. There was no reason to put Ciri under further scrutiny than she already garnered with her twin swords and ashen hair. If she cared to explain her parentage, she could do it on her own time. “Let’s just say someone important owed us a favor. My point is that checkpoints aren’t going to be an issue. We’ll get through fine.”

“Small miracles,” Gaetan said, lying back on his elbows. “Speaking of which…anybody have the foresight to bring some liquor?”

Lambert laughed. “Does a rotfiend stink? I’ve got enough vodka in my saddlebags to put an entire platoon on their asses.”

“Tell me it ain’t more of that basil shit,” Gaetan groaned. “ ‘m not a fan of sobriety overall but I’d take just about anything over that.”

“Gonna be honest, I don’t care for it either,” Geralt chimed in. “Tastes like I’m chewing a mouthful of grass.”

Ciri rolled her eyes. “Honestly, the lot of you are like children. Here. Take this and quit your bellyaching.”

She produced a heavy glass bottle, seemingly from nowhere, and tossed it to Gaetan. He examined the label, squinting at the faded print, and grinned. “Nilfgaardian lemon. I knew there was something I liked about you.”

“Don’t get used to it,” she replied, stretching out on her bedroll. “It’s the only bottle I’ve got. After it’s gone, we’re right back to chewing on grass.”

“Better enjoy it while it lasts, then,” Lambert said in resignation. “Game of Gwent?”

Ciri’s eyes flashed. “You’re on.”

⁂

The third day passed much more pleasantly than the previous two. Lambert resented the hangover throbbing in his temples, but if that was the worst of his problems, his life was actually going pretty smoothly for once. The liquor had done wonders to loosen up Gaetan as well, and the three of them traded stories as they rode. Though the sky threatened rain, it had yet to make good on it. The clouds lingered, sullen and heavy, but the road beneath them remained dry.

The four of them had no problems fording the Yelena. The snow high in the mountains had yet to thaw, and as a result the water was lower than Lambert had ever seen it. The riverbed was little more than a mud pit half a mile wide, with a slow stream of water trickling down its center. The biggest challenge they faced while crossing was avoiding the smooth stones that jutted up out of the silt like dull teeth. The mud sucked at their horses’ shoes, but they emerged clean on the other side.

It was all too simple. Ever since they’d departed, Lambert had been fighting the gut feeling that something was looming over them. Danger always lurked in the shadows on the Path. It was a fact of life. Things rarely went smoothly for a lone witcher, let alone four. Trouble would come visiting sooner or later. He almost found himself wishing it would, so that it would be over and he could stop anticipating it.

A few weeks of sleeping on decent beds and eating hot food had spoiled them all. Lambert’s joints ached from sleeping on the hard ground, and his ass hurt from sitting in the saddle. He thought Keira’s chamber often, with its down mattress and perfumed silk sheets and enormous soaking tub. What he wouldn’t have given for a decent bath. Bathing had always been one of the few pleasures in his life, and when he’d still been a proper witcher he had often scraped his meager coins together to afford a real bath in steaming hot water whenever he’d come to a large city. River water just wasn’t the same.

As the sun began to go down on the third day, they happened upon an inn. There was a little town spread out around it, like petals ringing a sunflower. The ground it sat upon was rocky—poor soil for farming, which was made evident by the few sad bean and potato plants that poked up where they could through the earth. Where any Northern settlement would have had its wheat fields, this one had a massive corral with a number of beautiful horses grazing on the scrub grass that grew within it.

That made sense. They must have been in Mag Deira by now. Horses were about the only thing of value the region produced. Their quality was unmatched—except, perhaps by the ones bred in Zerrikania.

There was an uneasy prickle in Lambert’s gut as the four of them rode into town. The road their horses trod upon sloped gently upward, with the inn at its peak. Aside from its horses, Mag Deira had a reputation for being flatter than an iron skillet. The nearest rise in the earth was dozens of miles away, where the foothills of the Amell Mountains grew on the other side of the Yelena.

Lambert’s medallions hummed almost imperceptibly as they drew near. The village folk hadn’t run when the witchers had appeared, nor had they drawn their pitchforks, but he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder. The way they eyed the newcomers was…strange. He couldn’t put his finger on why it unsettled him so.

Despite the strangeness of the town, all of them were of a like mind in regards to stopping for the night. For once in their lives, they had coin aplenty—enough, at least, for a couple of rooms. An itchy, straw-filled bed was better by far than no bed at all. The smell of the pig that was roasting over the fire wasn’t unappealing, either. Lambert’s stomach growled as he tied up the horses, making sure that there was plenty of grain and fresh water in the trough for them.

The food didn’t disappoint. The innkeep served up thick slices of ham, accompanied by stewed turnip greens with plenty of garlic and some fresh-baked bread. There was a violently crimson rhubarb pie as well, and although Lambert had never cared for the stuff even he had to admit that it was good.

The beer, on the other hand left, left something to be desired. He found it hard to mask his disappointment at the first taste, but that didn’t stop him from draining three mugs of the stuff. When he reached the point where he couldn’t eat any more, he leaned back against the wall and groaned.

“It’s a stroke of good luck we happened upon this place,” Ciri said, taking a sip of her own beer and wrinkling her nose. “I didn’t think there was much in the way of settlements along this road. Don’t most of the people live by the sea?”

“They live wherever they settle down,” Geralt replied, setting down his own fork with a clatter. “People around here don’t do much traveling. They live and die in the towns they were born in.”

Ciri shook her head. “I can’t imagine.”

The innkeep bustled around their table, clearing plates picked clean of food and empty mugs. “Will you be needin’ anythin’ else?”

“We’re good on food,” Lambert replied. “Got a question for you though—this hill the town sits on. It isn’t natural, is it?”

“Nay,” the innkeep said, shaking his head. “It’s a barrow. Not one we dug, mind you—‘twere here long before our forefathers settled.”

“You don’t exactly sound like Nilfgaardians.”

“Truth be told, we’re not,” the man replied as he stacked plates. “We may live under the Great Sun, but m’ father’s father was a Skelliger. Original settlers of this place were part of a raiding party. They drifted too far inland, found this hillock, and decided to stay. Found they had a flair for horse breedin’. Leader was a man named Vegeir. ‘S’where the town got its name—Vegeir’s Stand.”

“Stand?”

“Well, he stood an’ then he fell, as the story goes. He’s buried down there,” he said, with a nod at the ground, “in the shrine.”

Geralt arched an eyebrow. “Figured you worshipped the Great Sun.”

The innkeep scoffed. “Take you lot for Northerners. Am I right?”

“More or less.” Lambert shrugged.

“Then you should understand. Folk don’t like to let go o’ their customs, do they? We can pay tribute to the black’uns and still have our own beliefs.”

“Fair enough.”

Geralt handed over a pouch of coin. “Thanks for the food.”

The man nodded. “Let me know if you be needin’ anything else. Name’s Halwr, if I forgot to mention it.”

“Strange place,” Geralt remarked once he was out of earshot.

“Maybe. It’s not our problem, though,” Lambert said. “We’re leaving in the morning, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Gaetan, who had been unusually quiet during the meal, cleared his throat. “Got a question for you. Anybody else’s medallion humming?”

Lambert, Geralt, and Ciri nodded in unison.

“And nobody else is bothered by that?”

Lambert shrugged again. “That could be anything.”

“He’s right,” Geralt agreed. “Barrow’s probably elven-made. There could be any number of magic artifacts buried down there. It’s not necessarily a monster.”

Gaetan nodded as if he weren’t quite convinced. “Alright,” he conceded. “I’m not saying you’re wrong—but something down there’s making a huge racket, too. Listen.”

Lambert closed his eyes and focused, trying to ignore the ambient sounds of the tavern. Gaetan was right—something deep beneath the ground they stood on was making a hell of a lot of noise. It sounded like stone grinding against stone, like a fault line under strain. A fault line wouldn’t have affected his medallion, though. He swore under his breath.

“Yeah, I hear it.”

“There’s a monster down there.”

“Not our problem. We don’t have a contract, anyway.”

“Listen,” Gaetan said, leaning in. “You may not be hurting for gold, but I definitely am. I was kind of banking on the coin I would’ve made from those slyzards to patch up my armor. Feel free to say here and sit on your ass, but I’m going to nose around a little. See if there’s a contract I can pick up.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ciri said amicably, pushing her chair back from the table. “We’ll let you know if we learn anything interesting.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Lambert fiddled with the chains around his neck. “I’m not gonna stop you.”

Gaetan stood, stretching, and followed Ciri out of the tavern.

As soon as he was sure the two of them were out of earshot, Lambert turned to Geralt. “You’re really fine with her going off with him like that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Geralt replied, a challenge in his voice. “She’s an adult, Lambert. No point in trying to control her. She can make her own decisions.”

“How do you know you can trust him?”

“Ciri’s proven herself to be a better judge of people by far than me. Not my place to make those choices for her.”

Lambert shook his head.

“Listen,” Geralt said in a low voice. “I know that it’s easy to still think of her as a child. Believe me, I’ve struggled with that more than most. But she’s not the same girl I brought to Kaer Morhen all those years ago. She’s been through a lot. Seen more than most—you and me included. Things neither of us can even imagine. She’s tried telling me about it, but most of it went way over my head. All those years that she was on the run from Eredin changed her. She was alone for a lot of it. If she hadn’t learned to trust the right people, she wouldn’t be here now.”

“And what if she’s wrong?”

“She’s faced worse than him,” Geralt said grimly. “Doubt it’d be much of a match.”

“If you say so.” Lambert sighed. “It’s hard not to think of her as my kid sister sometimes. Y’know, there are times when I even miss it. Kaer Morhen, I mean. Training her on the pendulums. Racing the gauntlet.”

Geralt chuckled. “You’re getting sappy. Didn’t realize you were that drunk already.”

“Fuck off,” Lambert said gruffly. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

There was a brief silence. Lambert swilled the sour beer that was left in the bottom of his mug.

“I wish Eskel was here,” he said, frowning. “He was always the reasonable one.”

“Been a while,” Geralt agreed. “We can track him down when this is over.”

Lambert nodded slowly. “Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

⁂

Ciri and Gaetan were back before the sun had sunk below the horizon.

“Got something,” she said, grinning, dropping into the seat beside Lambert and interrupting what had been a rather boring game of dice.

“Money’s decent,” Gaetan added, taking the seat next to Geralt, “Not crowns, but still money. We asked around the town—folk’ve been going missing for years. People here are pretty cagey about it. Only ones who’d talk to us are the ones whose family have vanished. Everyone else pretty much slammed the door in our faces.”

Lambert raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And?” Ciri repeated, shaking her head. “Lambert. Missing villagers, monster under the barrow—it doesn’t take a philosopher to tie the threads together. Actually, it should be rather simple.”

“We don’t even know what kind of monster it is.”

“We all heard the sounds it was making,” Gaetan cut in. “Rocks smashing, elven ruins…it’s probably a golem. Should be easy enough. If any of the people who lived here tried exploring down there it definitely would’ve attacked them.”

Lambert shook his head at Ciri. “You’re just like Geralt. Neither of you could ever mind your own damn business.”

“Pay’s a hundred florens,” Gaetan said, crossing his arms. “I’ll split it with anyone who helps out. I could take the thing alone, but I’d really rather not have to.”

Lambert bit his lip, considering. It was a fair bit of coin for this part of the Continent—almost three hundred crowns, if he was doing his math right. A decent reward for relatively little risk. And, perhaps most importantly, if he helped out the whole thing would be over faster and they could get back on the road.

“Fine,” he said after a minute. “We take care of it tonight, though. I don’t want to waste any more time on it than we already have.”

“Just as well,” Geralt said. “We can buy some more supplies before we get back on the road. Not much between here and Metinna.”

“Ain’t gonna say no to some decent liquor.” Gaetan grinned. “Let’s do it. Gather your supplies and meet out back once the sun goes down.”

⁂

Lambert’s medallions continued to hum as he gathered his gear and stepped out into the night. Once the sun sank below the horizon, any fleeting warmth it had provided was gone in an instant. The leather of his gambeson did a little to deaden the chill, but he still found himself wishing he had something warm in his belly.

The other three were outside already, waiting. Gaetan leaned against the back wall of the inn. “Nice of you to join us.”

Lambert bristled. “Piss off. You haven’t been waiting long.”

“Cut the shit, both of you,” Geralt hissed. “Let’s get this done.”

The witchers crept down the side of the barrow, following the sound of stone grinding deep beneath the earth. It was much louder now, Lambert noticed. Whether that was because there was less to distract from it, or because the golem was angry about something, he couldn’t say. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it when they’d first ridden into the village.

It wasn’t hard to find the entrance, either. The grass and moss had grown over the carved stones that decorated it, but the boulder that served as a door was scraped clean. The earth beneath it was disturbed as well. It had been opened recently, then. At minimum since the last rain.

Lambert and Geralt rolled the stone out of the way, grunting with the effort. Gaetan stole a torch from a sconce just inside the opening and lit it with a spark of Igni.

The torch flared to life, its flames illuminating the path before them. The inside of the barrow was ornate; certainly elven in origin. Human masons lacked the skill to create something like this. The carved reliefs depicted a history: boats landing on shores, battles won and lost, the coronation of kings. A winding staircase descended into the darkness below. Up it drifted the echoing boom of rock crashing against rock.

Geralt drew his silver sword. “Guess it’s safe to say we’re in the right place.”

The rest of them did the same. Gaetan held the torch aloft. “I’ll go first.”

Lambert went second, close enough to see the torchlight reflecting off Gaetan’s bald head. He adjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword, determined not to be taken by surprise. It had been a while since he’d had a good fight. Better to make this one count.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, descending deep into the bowels of the earth. Lambert found himself wondering how big the tomb actually was. Who the hell was buried here?

Just as he finished the thought, Gaetan stopped short. Lambert almost walked right into him, swearing under his breath.

They’d reached the bottom.

The chamber before them was larger by far than he could have anticipated. Everyone in the village above could have comfortably resided within and never had to touch another person if they didn’t wish to. There was a shrine on the end closest to them, covered with little offerings of herbs and gold. In its center was a basin filled with what was unmistakably human ash. The smell alone would have been enough to confirm that for Lambert, even without the little bits of crumbled bone that were scattered throughout. The space was lit by orbs of light which hovered at fixed points a meter or so below the high, arched ceiling.

The sound of crashing boulders echoed back at them from every direction, so loud it was almost deafening. The source of the disturbance was immediately obvious—and it sure as shit wasn’t a golem.

On the far side of the chamber, shackled with dimeritium chains, was an earth elemental.

Lambert stared. “What the fuck.”

Gaetan blinked, slack-jawed. “You took the words right outta my mouth.”

The floor the elemental was chained to looked almost like an arena. It was clearly human-made. Stones had been dug out of the floor and rearranged to create low walls around the space. The earth within the walls was deeply stained with dried blood. The rusty scent of it prickled Lambert’s nose.

“Are they…” Lambert shook his head. “Are the morons fighting this thing? On purpose?”

“Looks like it,” Geralt said grimly. “Guessing those bones belong to the ones who didn’t win.”

“But _why?”_ Ciri whispered incredulously. “Why on earth would anyone do such a thing?”

“Skelligers.” Geralt groaned. “Strange folk. Visited a village once where they made me fistfight a bear. Wish I was kidding.”

Lambert gestured. “This is a bit more than a bear.”

The earth elemental roared and stamped its feet.

Ciri crept closer. “Do you think they caught it?”

“No way.” Lambert shook his head. “It was probably already down here. Either the elves dug it up by mistake, or they put it here on purpose to guard the necropolis. No idea who chained it up, but it was probably here long before good old Vegeir made his ‘stand.’”

“So what do we do?”

“Villagers paid us to kill it,” Gaetan said, wedging the base of the torch in between two loose stones. “I say we finish the job.”

“The rest of them may not be too happy with you if you do,” Geralt cautioned. “There’s a good chance they worship this thing. I’ve seen something like this before.”

“It’s not like we’re hanging around. We can collect our coin and be gone before anyone knows we killed it.”

Geralt grimaced. “Wouldn’t bank on that. And take it from me—pitchfork in the stomach? Doesn’t feel too great.”

“You forget who you’re talking to? I fucking know that.” Gaetan rolled his eyes. “Are we doing this or not?”

“Does it know what’s happening?” Ciri asked suddenly, looking at the elemental with interest.

“Huh?” Gaetan said distractedly.

“Is it aware?” Ciri clarified. “Is it suffering? It certainly seems angry.”

Geralt shook his head. “Elementals aren’t sapient. They’re forces of destruction. It’s angry in the same way a bear would be angry if its foot got caught in a trap.”

“Which only makes it more dangerous, by the way,” Lambert added dryly. “I say we kill it, though. Villagers won’t thank us for it, but if they really want to die that bad they can go find some other stupid way to do it.”

“Looks like I’m outvoted,” Geralt said with a heavy sigh. “If we’re going to do this, we’d better do it quick. No telling when someone’s going to turn up. We’ve got no idea how deep this barrow goes.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Lambert tightened his right hand on the grip of his silver sword and drew the sign of Quen with his left. “I’ll go in first, take the brunt of the force when it hits back. The shield breaking should stun it. Ciri—mind watching my back?”

“Of course.”

Lambert spat on the ground. “Let’s get this over with.”

“At least it’s chained up,” Geralt said, drawing Quen as he spoke.

Lambert tensed for the charge, adrenaline shooting through his chest. He took a deep breath. The earth elemental roared in fury.

“What in the ploughin’ hell are you doing?!”

The voice, though colored heavily by shock and outrage, was familiar. Lambert wheeled around to see the innkeep who had served them their meals just hours before, flanked by half a dozen village men in varying stages of drunkenness. He was dressed in heavy ceremonial furs and wielding a heavy warhammer. The others clenched axes, maces, and short swords in broad, sweaty fists. Lambert could smell the stench of them from the other side of the cavern. They reeked of sour beer and righteous anger.

“Since you asked, we were about to carry out a contract,” Gaetan said, leveling his gaze at the warriors. “If I were you, I’d stay out of our way.”

“Not going to happen.” Halwr swung his hammer threateningly. “Leave this place if you wish to keep your lives. ‘T’wasn’t meant for your eyes.”

“And who is it for?” Ciri asked.

“For us. For our worship. For the glory of honor by battle. For the blood and bones of our forefathers. But not for you and not for your swords. Leave. I won’t say it again.”

“Your pet monster has been killing people,” Lambert said, gesticulating in the direction of the elemental that was still trying its damnedest to tear free of its bonds. “Apparently, enough that some of your friends upstairs hired us to kill it.”

Halwr’s lip curled in disgust. “Blasphemers. Never did have any respect for the old ways. I spit on their houses.”

“Care to explain what you get out of keeping this thing chained up down here?”

“ ‘Tis a right of passage!” Halwr said, as if it should have been obvious. “Any young man who can hold his own in a fight with the Unbreakable is fit to choose his own path.”

“Yeah? And what about the ones that couldn’t?”

“Weak stock. In killing them, he makes our blood stronger.”

Strictly speaking, Lambert wasn’t terribly fond of religion as a concept. He tolerated it because he’d had to learn to coexist with Melitele and Lebioda and the Eternal-Fucking-Fire to make it through the front gates of pretty much any settlement on the continent, but it was fanatics like these that pissed him off more than anything else. They lived their lives in the dirt, with as many brains to their names as gold pieces, and made gods out of just about anything they didn’t understand. He hated them because he knew how they thought. He’d been one of them, once. Several lifetimes ago. Before the world had taught him that life was cold and cruel and senseless and he’d come to the conclusion that if there really were any gods out there that they had a sick fucking sense of humor.

And the clock was ticking. The only reason Halwr and his initiates hadn’t tried to kill them yet was that he liked hearing the sound of his own voice. When the fight inevitably broke out, it was going to be all the worse with a pissed off earth elemental rampaging around.

So that had to be the top priority. Kill the thing before it had the chance to kill them.

Halwr and his lackeys had them surrounded. He’d made his way across the cavern as he preached, placing himself squarely between the witchers and the monster. There was an opening, though—a small outcropping of rock from the cavern wall that Lambert could use to vault past him and strike first. He just had to catch them by surprise.

He locked eyes with Geralt, who nodded. Fast and precise, like a striking viper.

Lambert’s Quen hummed in his ears as if in anticipation of the coming violence. He waited, watching, holding his breath, for the instant Halwr looked away.

Halwr turned. Lambert sprinted toward the elemental—two quick steps and a flying leap from the top of the boulder propelled him past the reach of Halwr’s hammer. He rolled when he landed and kept running the second he regained his footing.

The elemental’s roar was mirrored by the outraged shouts of the warriors as they threw themselves at the rest of the party. Its hands were bound, but it was still more than capable of stomping hard enough to make the ceiling shake. As Lambert reached striking distance, it raised its foot up and stomped down as hard as it could on top of his head.

His shield took the brunt of the force, exploding in a blinding shower of golden sparks. The elemental stumbled backward, momentarily stunned, as Lambert spun on the balls of his feet and slashed at it with everything he had.

Earth elementals were more frustrating than most monsters to take down. At their most basic, they were really just piles of rocks and magic with attitude problems. There wasn’t any blood or viscera to be spilt. There wasn’t any muscle or tendon to slice. There was just raw power, and the sound of Lambert’s sword clanging against stone as he slashed at it over and over again. Fighting an elemental wasn’t unlike fighting a thunderstorm. It took a long fucking time and was frustrating as all hell, and often it was impossible to tell if he was making any real progress or just making a fool of himself.

Geralt, Ciri, and Gaetan had fought their way across the cavern, leaving several wounded and dying warriors in their wake. When Lambert rolled to dodge a heavy blow, he glimpsed the three of them just feet away, advancing on an enraged Halwr. They were practically on top of the elemental by now.

He gritted his teeth. There weren’t a whole lot of ways this could go, but none of the options were very good.

Halwr stumbled as he retreated and nearly fell under the elemental’s heavy foot. He rolled to the side at the last second, dodging a stomp that would have turned him into a smear on the stone floor, and snarled at the witchers.

“You want to test your strength?” he got to his feet, panting, seemingly unfazed by his brush with death. “You want to take our rites? Have it your way.” He hoisted his warhammer above his head. “Let’s see how you fare.”

Halwr’s hammer came down on the bolts that attached the elemental’s chains to the floor with a crack like lightning striking.

With a roar that shook the stones beneath their feet, the elemental broke free of its shackles.

Lambert, who hadn’t been anticipating it to swing at him, barely managed to throw himself out of the way in time. What was left of the dimeritium chain whipped from the elemental’s wrists, throwing sparks when it struck the floor. Lambert scrambled to his feet, drawing the sign of Quen once more.

He and Geralt swore in unison.

_“Shit.”_

All hell broke loose. If the tomb had been an arena before, now it was a battlefield. The elemental charged across the cavern like an enraged bull, crashing into the opposite wall. It stomped on more than one wounded initiate as it ran. The sound of their bones crunching and flesh squelching under its feet made Lambert’s skin crawl.

He shook his head like he was trying to clear his ears of water and ran after the elemental. Ciri was hot on his heels, leaving Geralt and Gaetan to deal with Halwr. Lambert didn’t doubt they’d manage. By himself, the man wasn’t much of a threat.

The elemental had crashed into the wall with so much force that it had embedded itself in the stone. It struggled to pull itself free, thrashing and beating its fists.

There was an opening—a small one, but the best chance they were going to get. A small gap between the rocky armor of the elemental’s back and the back of its disproportionately tiny head, exactly where the brain stem would have been on a human.

Lambert yelled urgently over his shoulder to Ciri. “You see it?”

“Yes!”

“Careful, we’re only getting one shot at this. I’ll give you a boost. You ready?”

“Yes!” she called again, panting as she ran behind him.

Lambert dropped to his knees, sliding across the stone floor, and drew the sign of Aard, directing the force of it upward. Ciri jumped over him just as he did so. The blast sent her flying straight toward the elemental, which was seconds away from freeing itself.

Ciri gripped her sword with both hands, eyes narrowed in concentration, and plunged the point of it directly into the back of the elemental’s neck.

The sound was incredible—a groan that sounded like a rock slide crashing down a mountain and rose in pitch before ceasing abruptly. The earth elemental crumbled and collapsed into a pile of inert rubble. Ciri fell to the ground, rather ungracefully but for the most part uninjured.

Lambert extended a hand and pulled her to her feet, ruffling her hair. “Nice work.”

She shoved him away with a grin. “You too.”

Geralt approached the two of them, sheathing his sword. “Where the hell’d you two learn to do something like that?”

Lambert shrugged. “We’ve been doing it since she was a kid. It was the only way to get her up the high wall in the outer keep—you know, the collapsed tower? Used to do it all the time.”

Geralt shook his head. “Never should’ve left you two alone together.”

“Hey, it paid off today, didn’t it?” Lambert sheathed his own sword. “What happened with Halwr?”

“Hit him with Axii. He’s pretty out of it.” Geralt nodded at the other side of the arena, where Halwr sat on the bloodstained floor looking at his own hands like he’d never seen them before. Gaetan stood over him, arms crossed.

“Great.” Lambert looked around at the crushed and crumpled bodies scattered across the cavern. A few of Halwr’s men were still alive, though only just. He could still hear their hearts beating, at the very least. There was no telling what would be left of them when they woke up. If they woke up. “I suggest we dig a trophy out of that pile of rubble and get moving before it wears off, then. He’s going to be pissed when he figures out what happened.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Gaetan called across the room, striding over to what was left of the elemental and sifting through the remains. “Let’s get our coin and get the hell out.”

“So much for a good night’s sleep,” Lambert muttered under his breath.

“Yeah, my bad. I’ll pay you back for your room, alright? C’mon.” He picked up a piece of the monster and headed for the stairs. “I’m sure the folks upstairs heard the racket. It won’t be long before more of them show up.”

⁂

The witchers collected their coin, which in Lambert’s opinion was nowhere near enough compensation for the trouble they’d gone to to collect it, and rode out of town as soon as they were finished packing their horses.

Their camp that night was miserable. They’d gone as far as they could from the village before stopping, but the plains of Mag Deira were lacking in tree cover, and Lambert still felt uncomfortably exposed as they built their fire and spread out their bedrolls in the dubious shelter of a large boulder. With nothing significant to break the wind for miles in either direction, the campsite was cold and blustery. The only thing it had in its favor was that it hadn’t rained recently, and the ground was dry for once.

Lambert didn’t sleep much that night. Every time he closed his eyes he was haunted by the crack of bone and squelch of flesh. The sound echoed back at him through years on the Path—the death of his employer at the hands of the Ogre of Ellander; the sound of Aiden’s limp body falling to the ground as he was flung from a fiend’s horns; the snapping of small bones and hopeless cries for help as a group of fledgling witchers ran afoul of Old Speartip.

He had seen enough senseless death and misery to last a dozen lifetimes. He lay on his back, fighting the chill, hands curled into fists, until the dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contracts never really turn out the way you hope they will, do they?


	5. The Pugilists

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read, as always, by [bookscorpion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion)!

Lambert wasn’t the only one who had slept poorly that night, if the others’ sour moods the next morning were anything to go by. The four of them packed up camp and saddled their horses with hardly a word, continuing along the road south toward Ebbing.

There were but two large obstacles separating them from their destination: the city of Metinna, and the river Sylte. By midday, they were within sight of the former’s walls.

Metinna was one of the largest cities in the region. It paled in comparison to Beauclair or Novigrad or even Tretogor, but it was still impressive in its own right despite being half the size. It sat at a crossroads: three large highways met at its gates, and its forces were charged with the defense of the only bridge spanning the Sylte for miles. Metinna had once been a kingdom of its own, but after several lost wars and a failed revolt, had finally settled into life as a vassal state of Nilfgaard. Its independence from the empire was, of course, in name only. The city and surrounding towns had assimilated into the whole over the generations as the citizens had taken on more and more Nilfgaardian travelers and customs. By now, it was almost indistinguishable from any of the other cities of the south.

Weary from fitful sleep and unenthusiastic about the idea of spending yet another windy night camping on the plains, the witchers agreed to stop early and spend the night within the city’s walls. They reached the gate, above which fluttered a massive banner bearing a crescent moon overshadowed by a rising sun, just as the sky began to darken.

Though the hour was late, the streets bustled with life. An enormous livestock market sat just inside the gates, and if the energized shouts emanating from the crush of people crammed into it were any indication, it was doing a roaring trade. The streets were lined with shops and stalls laden with artisan goods for sale. Lambert wrinkled his nose as they rode past a cheese cart. Still, he would have gladly crammed a hunk of Camembert up his nose rather than smell the shit and sweat that usually permeated places such as these.

They didn’t have to wander long before they found an inn. It was seedier than most of the places they’d slept recently, but Lambert didn’t particularly mind. He’d always had a fondness for inns like these—he could reliably pick up a job or two, the rooms were cheap enough that he could actually afford them, or at least barter some ingredients for a cot, the beer was usually decent, and most of the time no one looked twice at him. What was one more freak amongst a hundred? Aiden had always been of a similar mind—a habit that had, in part, led to the two of them crossing paths in the first place.

“Before anyone goes digging,” Lambert said as he pushed open the door, “let’s get one thing straight: no contracts. We eat, we sleep, and we leave. Clear?”

Geralt nodded. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

Lambert locked eyes with Gaetan.

“Who jammed a stick up your ass? Fine, yeah, I get it. No contracts. I swear on my dubious honor.”

“Good.”

Lambert made a beeline for the first empty chair he saw and collapsed into it. The others were close behind. Ciri yawned widely, stretching, and closed her eyes.

“Evenin’ gents, what’ll it be?” The girl who came to take their order was comely enough. She wasn’t Lambert’s type—a bit too young for his taste, with full lips and dark hair swept back into a low knot, but he did note with some amusement Ciri cracking one eye open to look her over.

“Give me a bowl of whatever’s hot,” he said, only now realizing that he hadn’t eaten all day, “and some vodka.”

“I’ll pay five extra florens if you can find a bottle that doesn’t have basil in it.” Gaetan dug in his pockets for the coin.

“Lamb stew for everyone, then?”

The four of them nodded in unison.

“And a bottle of rosé,” Geralt added.

“Comin’ right up.” She smiled and bustled off.

“Rosé?” Lambert raised an eyebrow. “You gone soft on me?”

“Piss off,” Geralt said amicably. “It’s their specialty. Metinna is famous for it. Actually, I remember Triss having a soft spot for it, once upon a time. Worth remembering if you ever need to get on her good side.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll keep that in mind.”

The inn was slammed with patrons. Lambert could barely hear the others over the roar of the raucous game of Gwent at the next table, or the smack of fists on flesh coming from the brawl in the far corner. The bookie shouted over the crowd that had gathered to watch, attempting to recruit new challengers.

The serving girl returned with their food a moment later. It smelled decent—chunks of tender lamb in a stew of sweet red pepper, bacon, broth, and potatoes. There were a few dense dumplings set on top with a dollop of cream. Gaetan uncorked the bottle of vodka, gave it a cautious sniff, and then poured out a measure into each of their mugs.

It was a good meal, all things considered. Lambert hadn’t expected much from this tavern, but looks could be deceiving. He scraped his bowl clean and ordered a second. He even tried the wine, and though he was far from a connoisseur, even he had to admit that it was pretty good. By the time he was done, his head was buzzing pleasantly.

The brawl in the corner had taken over more and more of the inn as they ate, and by now was pressing close to the table where the witchers sat.

“No takers?” the bookie shouted over the crowd. “Is no one brave enough to take on the reigning champ?” He gestured around the tavern, his gaze lighting on their table. “What about you, whitey?” he said, pointing at Geralt. “Or your lass, there? She looks like she could take a punch.”

Geralt shook his head. “Pass.”

“You, the surly one! Take your chances—only ten florens!”

“He’s talking to you,” Geralt muttered to Lambert.

“Hell no,” Lambert said, knocking back what was left of his vodka.

“Alright, baldy then. Going to man up, or ‘ave you got a cunny in your trousers?”

The three of them glanced at Gaetan, who looked like he was mulling it over in his head.

“Don’t,” Geralt said in a low voice.

“Fuck it.” Gaetan shoved his bench back from the table and stood. “I’ll fight.”

“That’s the spirit!” the bookie cried as the crowd clapped and jeered in anticipation. “Lose the swords, first—an’ give us our coin—there we are. Make a hole, lads! Let ‘im through!”

“Yeah,” Lambert groaned. “This is gonna go great.”

Geralt sighed wearily. “Come on. We should go watch. Make sure he doesn’t kill anybody.”

“Remind me why I agreed to come on this trip in the first place?”

“Quit whining and get up.”

Lambert complied with extreme irritation, abandoning his rapidly-cooling third bowl of stew with a wistful glance and pushing his way into the throng surrounding the brawlers. Gaetan stood in the center, shrugging out of his swordbelts and passing them to the bookie with the threat that if anything were to happen to them someone was going to be losing a cock. He unlaced his gambeson, passing it over, and cracked his knuckles. Ciri pressed through the crowd and retrieved his effects from the bookie before someone could snatch them.

Gaetan circled his opponent—a mountain of a man, though he was more lard than muscle. He wore nothing but a pair of striped trousers and some worn boots, and his skin shone with sweat in the smoke and heat of the tavern. Gaetan was easily half his size, though Lambert wouldn’t have called that a disadvantage. The brawler looked like he could hit like a charging shaelmaar, but his size was bound to make him slow.

This probably wasn’t going to play out like the bookie thought it would.

Gold changed hands as the crowd shouted. The brawler pointed one heavy arm at Gaetan’s chest. “I’m going to knock you into next week!”

“Bring it on,” Gaetan spat back.

It was over before anyone but the witchers realized what was happening. The brawler swung, fist barreling toward Gaetan with enough force to shatter bone, but missed his mark completely. Gaetan ducked under his arm, pivoted on the ball of his foot, and landed one solid punch to the back of his head.

The brawler went down like a sack of bricks.

Cheers of excitement turned to shouts of outrage and accusations of cheating the moment he hit the floor. The bookie made a face like someone had shoved a chamber pot under his nose as he presumably realized how much money he was about to lose paying out the bets he’d taken. He looked wildly around the tavern, his eyes flicking longingly at the door, and then fixed his gaze on Lambert.

“You—surly! Your friend beat Gregor, so I’m guessin’ we need a stronger opponent! Don’t we, lads?” He glanced nervously around at the patrons clamoring for their money. “What do you say? Step into the ring—I’ll even waive your entry fee!” He flashed what was probably supposed to be a charming smile.

Lambert shook his head. “No way.”

“What’s wrong, Lambert?” Gaetan taunted from where he stood over Gregor’s unconscious form. “Afraid you’re gonna lose?”

“Come on, lads,” the bookie shouted. “Who wants to see the freaks fight?”

The crowd roared as Geralt locked eyes with Lambert and almost imperceptibly shook his head.

Lambert ground his teeth. “Son of a whore.”

Before he had time to talk himself out of it, he was tossing Ciri his swordbelts and shucking off his gambeson. He was grateful for the excuse to shed the leather, if nothing else—it was oppressively hot in the tavern between the fire and the number of people crammed into it, and the cotton shirt he wore underneath was sticking to his skin. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck.

The crowd parted to let him through and then closed behind him, forming a wall of people six men deep around Lambert and Gaetan as they circled each other.

Lambert prided himself on being a decent fighter. He’d been in more scraps than he cared to recount over the years—probably more than he might have if his tongue were a bit less sharp. He usually took some damage, but he didn’t often lose. Gaetan, from the look of things, could probably say the same. Much as when he was fighting with a sword, he leaned heavily on the Cat School’s fighting style, which relied on using the opponent’s strength and momentum against them. He was faster than he looked, too. Lambert was going to have to be careful.

Gaetan threw the first punch.

It was experimental, clearly meant to test Lambert’s reflexes. There was no real force behind it. Lambert blocked it easily and stepped to the side, throwing one of his own. Gaetan ducked under his right hook and pivoted to get behind Lambert, but Lambert anticipated his spin. With a feint to the right and then a dodge to the left, he lashed out with an uppercut that connected solidly with Gaetan’s jaw.

Gaetan staggered backward, swearing. Lambert grinned and shook out his fist. Damn, that had felt good. He’d been questioning what it was he really wanted from Gaetan ever since they’d first stumbled over him in the Nazairi wilds. Hitting him wasn’t _exactly_ the answer, but it did satisfy a knot of anger he’d been carrying in his gut, and for the moment, that was enough.

He didn’t have the upper hand for long. Lambert ducked under two swings but mistimed the third—a glancing blow on the cheek. It didn’t smart, but it wounded his pride. He advanced, keeping his guard up, throwing jabs whenever he saw a gap in Gaetan’s defenses. Most of his punches were easily deflected. A couple connected, but nowhere near as hard as he’d meant them to.

The crowd had by now swelled until it occupied almost all the empty space in the tavern. Everyone in Metinna wanted to see a pair of witchers fighting, apparently. Lambert grinned, letting the fame wash over him for a fleeting moment. It felt good to be looked at with something other than disgust for once.

He didn’t get to savor it for long. In the split second that he’d let his focus slide from Gaetan, the other witcher closed the distance between them and punched him straight in the nose.

Lambert felt something crack when his fist connected. Pain exploded behind his eyes, red and insistent. He stumbled backward, eyes watering, fumbling at his face.

Definitely broken, and bleeding to boot. Lambert spat crimson onto the floorboards and gritted his teeth, snarling. He’d have blood for that. An eye for an eye.

Gaetan was definitely drunk, or at least fast approaching it. His face was flushed red with alcohol, and beads of sweat ran down his forehead. Lambert wasn’t far behind him, but he was still sober enough to exploit Gaetan’s delayed reaction times. He swung his fist, intentionally falling short of his mark, dodged Gaetan’s clumsy counter, and hit him back twice as hard.

Gaetan almost hit the floor. He regained his balance at the last second, the heel of his hand pressed to his eye, which would likely be shining a lovely shade of violet come morning. Lambert felt a deep satisfaction watching him struggle to piece himself back together. He’d win this yet.

Blow after blow, hooks and haymakers. The floorboards creaked under Lambert’s bootheels as he and Gaetan circled one another. Blood still streamed from his broken nose, the steady drip of it falling to the ground marking the passage of time. Lambert got in another solid punch, splitting Gaetan’s lip. Gaetan landed another on him, catching him in the temple and making him see stars.

The fight grew ever messier, ever more feral. The crowd pushed and shouted. The bookie yelled, whipping them into a frenzy. There was bloodlust on the air, thick enough to taste.

It all went to shit in an instant. Gaetan tackled Lambert, pinning him to the ground. With every bit of force he could muster, Lambert overpowered him, rolling so that he was on top. Gaetan spat blood from his split lip, momentarily blinding him. He shoved Lambert away, and both scrambled to their feet, panting.

Lambert noticed at the last instant Gaetan beginning to draw the sign of Aard. He did the only thing his liquor- and pain-addled brain could think to do in that moment.

He kicked Gaetan straight in the balls.

Gaetan went down hard. The crowd screamed. Lambert lost all control of himself. The crowd wanted blood. _He_ wanted blood. That bastard was—

_“Enough!”_

Ciri was suddenly between them, pushing them apart. Everything in the tavern rattled momentarily with the force of her voice. Lambert wasn’t so drunk that he missed it, and neither was Gaetan, judging by the way the fight went out of him in an instant. It was raw power, briefly allowed to rattle the bars of its cage. It was different from the thrum of Keira or Yennefer’s voices when they cast a spell—this was true, unbridled force. Magic that thirsted for destruction even as Ciri reigned it in. Lambert’s medallions vibrated hard against his chest, and then fell still.

The tavern was silent, as if everyone in it were holding their breath.

Ciri turned to face their crowd. “Show’s over. Go home.”

The bookie, at least, didn’t need telling twice. He darted out the door in an instant, and a moment later a handful of unfortunate gamblers took off in pursuit.

Ciri rounded on Lambert and Gaetan. “That was quite enough. Go upstairs and sleep it off. Both of you.”

Lambert wiped at the blood that streamed steadily from his nose. “I—”

_“Go.”_ Her tone left no room for discussion. “I’m keeping your swords. You can have them back when you’re sober. _If_ you ask nicely.”

“Ciri—”

“Don’t make me say it again.” She stalked back over to their table and dropped into her seat, placing the swords on the table beside her and pulling a deck of Gwent cards from her pocket.

Lambert swore foully under his breath. Gaetan staggered to his feet, probing at his split lip with his fingertips. The two of them made eye contact for an instant, and anger flared once more in Lambert’s chest, burning like acid. It was probably a good thing that Ciri had taken his swords. If he’d had them handy, one of them would have been missing a limb. Or worse.

He complied, in the end, because there really wasn’t any room for argument. He’d lost every bit of high ground he had when he’d decided to step into the ring.

As he lay in bed that night, two scraps of a torn rag stuffed up his broken nose, he sobered up just enough to feel a tinge of regret. What the hell was he doing? Gaetan may have been rash, and hot-tempered, and occasionally callous, but he hadn’t done a damn thing to wrong Lambert personally before tonight. Lambert found himself wondering, rather sourly, if it was the man he was angry with or the symbol he wore. Could he even trust his own judgment, after everything he’d been through?

Perhaps not.

He lay on his side, closing his eyes and fighting back the beginnings of a thunderous headache, until sleep at last mercifully rose up to overtake him.

⁂

Breakfast the next morning was somber. Lambert had awoken with his head pounding, as if a blacksmith were using it as an anvil. The water in his washbasin had come back rusty after he’d splashed it on his face, despite the measures he’d taken to staunch the bleeding. He’d caught sight of his reflection in the bowl, and he couldn’t deny that he looked like shit. The bridge of his nose was swollen and tender—not that it was the first time he’d had it broken, and it probably wouldn’t be the last—and a deep violet bruise bloomed outward from there into the hollows of his eyes. The sallow tone of his skin definitely didn’t help the overall image.

Gaetan didn’t look much better. One of his eyes was swollen almost shut, and he sported a split lip that was only tenuously scabbed over. It looked as if eating was painful, and took a great deal of effort. He stared sourly into his porridge, methodically cleaning the bowl one minuscule bite at a time.

Geralt and Ciri acted as if nothing had happened, save for giving both of them the cold shoulder. The two of them plotted as they worked their way through a platter of fried sausages, deciding what would be the most prudent path to take south once they crossed the river Sylte. As Metinna sat upon a crossroads, they were faced with a number of options.

The route they ended up choosing was longer than taking the main road, but avoided all major settlements. The only things that stood between them and Stygga were a handful of tiny towns, most of which were little more than a few houses and a barn, and some marshland.

Lambert and Gaetan both accepted the decision with a terse nod. It wasn’t like they had any room to argue after the scene they had caused the previous night. It would be better to let someone else lead for a while. Lambert wasn’t suited to it, and based on the events of the last few days, it seemed that Gaetan got riled up far too easily.

They left Metinna before midday, after a brief stop at the market to replenish their supplies. Crossing the checkpoint at the river bridge was, as promised, the easiest part of the journey by far. The Nilfgaardian office stationed there eyed the four of them suspiciously as they approached, but one flash of Ciri’s extremely official letter of safe conduct, with its ostentatious seal in gold wax and the signature of the Emperor himself in spiky black cursive, was more than enough to shut him up. The troops let them pass, sharing a few perplexed glances at the twin swords on their backs, and soon enough the sound of the Sylte slowly churning toward the sea had faded completely into the distance.

It was a long road south. The monotony began to eat away at Lambert after the first few hours. It was impossible to tell if they were making any real headway, because everything looked the same. There were no signposts or towns or inns by which to mark their progress. There was only scrub grass, and the occasional rock, and the feeble spring sunlight trying to filter through the clouds.

They pitched camp that night underneath the only tree for miles. Its sweeping branches offered some semblance of shelter, which was more than they could have asked for. Ciri managed to snare a couple of rabbits while Lambert gathered sticks for the fire and Geralt and Gaetan dug a pit to burn them in and spread out their bedrolls.

The four of them sat in silence as the meat roasted on its spit, caressed by the evening breeze. Lambert’s head throbbed in time with the passing seconds, and even though he knew it was going to hurt every time he did it, he couldn’t help but probe his broken nose with his fingertips. It was going to be even more crooked now, he thought to himself ruefully. Not that it mattered. Not that any of this mattered.

It was a miracle Gaetan could see at all through his swollen black eye. Lambert had been half-expecting him to fall off his horse at any point throughout the day. The bastard was tough, though. He had to give him that much. And a much bigger challenge than Lambert had expected him to be.

Less than a week on the road and he already missed Assengard. What he wouldn’t have given for a dull, boring life. It was stupid, the way he missed the Path when he was at rest and he missed standing still when he had no choice but to travel. At times it felt like the peasant boy in him was trying to fight off the witcher.

It wasn’t much of a fight. He was here after all, wasn’t he?

Barring any trouble, they would reach Stygga the day after next. And then, one way or another, this would all be over. He could ponder the subtleties of his nature some other day, when he was less hungover and less pissed off.

For now, there was naught to do but lie on his back and wait for the sun to rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this chapter felt pretty good to write. Both of them needed to be knocked down a few pegs. 
> 
> I hope you're enjoying the story so far <3


	6. Sea of Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by [bookscorpion!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion)

The days bled away without Lambert’s notice until at last the mountain range that formed Ebbing’s southern border rose up before them.

The mountains seemed to spring up out of nowhere. For so many days there had been nothing but plains with the occasional plot of swampy marshland to break the monotony. It seemed that there had been nothing for miles and miles, and then Lambert blinked and suddenly a wall of sheer stone rose up before him.

That meant Stygga was close. It sat on the side of the nearest mountain, cradled on the edge of a small valley with a lake just below. They would reach it by nightfall.

There was palpable tension in the air as they rode. Gaetan, Lambert could understand. He probably would have felt the same riding through Kaer Morhen valley. Geralt and Ciri, though—he didn’t get what their problem was. Geralt had told him enough over the years for him to gather that there had been a battle at Stygga, with Ciri being the cause, but the details remained a mystery to him.

Maybe he’d find out soon enough.

As the sun sank low in the west, Gaetan pulled his reins and stopped his horse. “Something’s wrong. We should be able to see it by now.”

“What do you mean?” Geralt stopped as well, patting Roach on the withers when she whinnied nervously. “You trying to say the whole castle up and vanished?”

“I don’t know.” Gaetan’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Come on.” He snapped the reins and took off at a gallop, leaving the other three behind in the dust.

“We had better follow him,” Geralt said grimly.

The road flew by underneath Lambert as the witchers rode hard in pursuit. As they raced toward their destination, the grassy plains gave way to earth, and then to stone. Enormous outcroppings of rock jutted up out of the ground. There were trees seeded in the crags between the boulders, but they were all long dead. Nothing could grow in a place like this.

The withered trees grew more and more numerous as they rode. Lambert only realized when he had to duck to avoid being knocked out of his saddle by one that overhung the road that they weren’t trees at all.

They were masts.

Masts of battered and broken ships, their carcasses strewn about the rocks. The sails had long rotted away. Occasionally there was still a length of rope tied to a boom, swinging in the wind like an empty noose.

A chill ran down Lambert’s spine. They were miles from water. The nearest river was the Arete, and it was a day’s ride to the north. Mountains separated them from the sea to the west. And yet the path they rode was littered with ships, resting upon the rocks as if they had run aground in a storm. It didn’t make any sense at all.

Eventually, they caught Gaetan. He had dismounted his horse just over the next rise, and was staring dumbfounded into the valley below.

There was nothing.

Rather, there was _something_ , but it wasn’t a castle. A mountain of rubble sat on the cliffside where Stygga should have been. There was just enough of it left to tell that they were in the right place—the remnants of a crumbling archway here, a fragment of warped iron portcullis there—but to all intents and purposes the fortress was gone. Lambert couldn’t imagine the amount of force it would have taken to do such a thing. Had the castle fallen to the same preternatural storm that had deposited all the broken ships on the stony sea behind them?

It was impossible to say.

“What the hell happened here?” Lambert was the first to speak the words, but the bewilderment on Geralt and Ciri’s faces told him that they were just as lost as he was.

Gaetan only shook his head wordlessly and began to walk down the path to the ruins, leaving his horse behind.

Lambert shot a glance at Geralt, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me. There was definitely a castle here last time I was in Ebbing.”

“How long ago was that?”

Geralt frowned. “Come on.”

The three of them trailed up the path behind Gaetan, eyeing the ruins apprehensively. Whatever had happened here, it didn’t bode well for their quest. Anything that had been concealed here had to be long gone by now.

Lambert was the first to verbalize that fact. “You’re joking, right? You’re sure we didn’t take a wrong turn somewhere? Because I can guarantee you that whatever you were looking for got blown up a long time ago.”

“It’s here,” Gaetan growled, not turning around. “It has to be.”

Geralt laid a placating hand on his shoulder. “We’re losing the light. Let’s make camp. We can search in the morning.”

“I’m not a miner,” Lambert said, crossing his arms. “Sorry, but I’m not exactly feeling enthusiastic about getting crushed under a pile of rubble digging for something that isn’t even there.”

 _“Lambert,”_ Ciri hissed, nudging him pointedly.

Lambert shrugged. “Look, I’m just saying what we’re all thinking. What are the odds we get out of here in one piece with the treasure? Practically zero. One wrong move and the whole thing’s going to slide off the mountain and into the lake.”

“If the situation were reversed,” she replied with a disappointed shake of her head, “the three of us would be doing the same.”

Lambert had mixed feelings about that, but he let them churn away in his stomach rather than speaking them aloud.

Geralt, from the sound of things, had convinced Gaetan to wait until daylight before resuming his fool’s errand. They made camp that night under the staved-in hull of a capsized ship. It was more comfortable than most places they’d slept over the past week; the planking was dry under their bedrolls, and it was shielded from the wind.

Despite the relative comfort, the atmosphere around the fire that night was more solemn than most. Gaetan sat alone, resignedly pounding back a bottle of the Nazairi basil vodka he professed to hate so much. Lambert went rapidly from wishing he would shut the hell up once in a while, as he’d been for the better part of the last few days, to wishing he would say something, anything at all. His sour mood was at once impossible to ignore and unbearable to be around.

Gaetan’s hunched posture and stony expression made it extremely clear that he wanted neither to talk nor be comforted—even Ciri was keeping far clear of him. Lambert lay back on his bedroll and rolled over so that he was facing the wall, trying to distance himself as much as possible. He could take a decent guess as to what was going through Gaetan’s head right now. If he didn’t make a concerted effort, he was going to get dragged down that path as well, and he didn’t have the energy to fight those demons tonight.

Eventually, lulled by the sound of the hull creaking as the wind gusted against it, Lambert fell into an uneasy sleep.

⁂

He awoke in a strange place.

Walls of stone surrounded him instead of the softly curving wood of the ship’s hull. The floor beneath his feet looked as if it had been scrubbed within an inch of its life. The air was cold—the kind of chill that went straight to the bone. Lambert shivered and rubbed his hands together, breathing on them to get some blood back into his fingertips.

The space he found himself in appeared to be a corridor. There were windows cut into the walls—thin slits that lacked glass and served more as conduits for wind than to let in light. There were torches set in brackets between them, and the flames guttered as he cautiously made his way forward.

Luck was on his side, for once. There was a doorway at the end of the hall, which led to a spiral staircase, which led to another passage on a lower level that ran in the opposite direction. Lambert followed it, reasoning that he had to be moving toward the exit. If he could just find a way outside, he could use the sky to get his bearings and try to figure out where the hell he was.

He wandered blindly down endless corridors for what felt like hours without seeing a single soul. That was odd. A fortress of this size should have had hundreds of people in it. He should have encountered someone by now.

Just as he had the thought, he opened another door and found himself in a large hall. From the look of things, it was an entryway. A grand staircase occupied most of the space, sweeping down on either side of the atrium. Behind Lambert stood two enormous oak doors, held shut by a heavy iron mechanism. Fires burned in braziers on either side, and on the walls were hung a number of tapestries, each seeming to depict some feat of heroism. Most were quite bloody. On some were woven monsters being hacked to pieces by a talented swordsman. On others, men fell prey to sharp blades. Every last one of them depicted the hero as a man with two swords and golden eyes.

A witcher.

His face was cold and expressionless as he massacred the woven horde. Lambert swallowed, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. His gaze wandered upward, to where an enormous brass crest hung at the top of the staircase.

It was a symbol he’d seen a hundred times before. The cat’s head medallion around his neck suddenly felt like it was burning a hole through his gambeson.

“Where the hell am I?”

“Where do you think?”

The voice, spoken from somewhere behind him, hit Lambert like a bolt through the chest. He whirled around to find its owner and stopped dead in his tracks.

Aiden sat perched on the banister, a bitter smile on his face.

He looked exactly as Lambert remembered him. Those chestnut curls. His short beard. Golden eyes that matched Lambert’s exactly. Deep blue armor inlaid with dark metal plates and sewn with a hood that could be pulled up to hide the wearer’s face.

And a scar, distinctive and unique—four wicked claw marks that bit into the flesh just beneath his right ear and trailed across his throat before disappearing below the neck of his gambeson.

Lambert tried to speak, but the words strangled in his throat. He swallowed hard and tried again.

“How?”

“Nice to see you, too.” Aiden cocked his head.

“Is…” His heart was pounding in his ears. “Is this real?”

Aiden shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Where are we?”

“Stygga Castle.” Aiden looked around the hall with disdain.

Not real, then. Lambert’s heart fell abruptly from his throat into the pit of his stomach. Only a dream. Or worse, an illusion. He reached out hesitantly, trying to shake the fear that Aiden would dissolve in front of him.

The lightest touch of Lambert’s fingertips to the back of a hand that was warm, and solid, and definitely real enough for him. He swallowed again, shaking.

“Aiden, I…” He fought hard against the sudden tightness in his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was my fault—everything that happened—O’Dimm—Karadin—I never should have—”

In an instant, Aiden seized him and pulled him into a tight embrace. One strong hand gripped the small of Lambert’s back, while the other fisted in his hair.

Lambert fell to pieces.

It was the smell of him, more than anything else that did it. A constant, always there and untempered even by a day in the saddle or a hunt in a downpour. Juniper and musk. Warm and reassuring in a way Lambert could feel in the deepest parts of his being. A hint of sage. The smell of earth after a spring rain. Aiden.

He’d almost forgotten it. The scent opened the floodgates of everything he’d held back, everything he’d thought he’d already gotten over, everything that still hung over his head like an executioner’s axe. Lambert buried his face in Aiden’s shoulder and sobbed, clinging to him like he was the only thing holding him together.

“It’s alright, Lambert,” Aiden murmured, his own voice choked with tears. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

It was a long time before Lambert could speak. When the tears at last had dried up, he was left hollow and sore. He pulled away ever so slightly, just enough that he could see Aiden’s face again.

“I missed you.” His voice was hoarse. “Every day that I wake up without you, it hurts.”

There was sorrow in Aiden’s eyes. “I know.”

A kiss, laid tenderly on salt-stained lips. Lambert could have spent forever in that moment, torn between pain and joy, but it was over all too soon. Aiden released his hold on Lambert and took his hand a moment later, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“Why are we here?” Lambert asked finally, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Aiden said with a frown. “I never much cared for this place.”

Lambert shot a glance at the nearest tapestry. “Nice decor.”

It was a pale attempt at a joke, but Aiden chucked at it nonetheless, and the sound of his laughter sent another pang through Lambert’s chest. Yet another thing that he’d forgotten already.

“Come on,” he said, leading Lambert toward the heavy oak doors. The lock’s mechanism appeared extremely complicated, but was coaxed open by a single press of Aiden’s fingers. The wood creaked as Aiden pushed the door open, and the two of them stepped out into the night.

The sky above was strange. It was cloudless and studded with stars, but the constellations weren’t any that Lambert was familiar with. They seemed to morph and shift when he wasn’t looking, twisting into new and deceiving shapes.

The two of them now stood at the castle’s front steps, which descended down to the edge of the cliff upon which it sat. Aiden led Lambert to the precipice, leaning over the stone railing that separated them from a hundred foot drop, and gestured out into the valley.

Even Lambert had to admit that it was beautiful. The lake below was smooth as glass, and the entire sky was reflected in it. A single bird fluttered down to land upon the water, sending ripples through the mirror of its surface and distorting the stars. As above, so below.

“There wasn’t much I found joy in during my time here,” Aiden remarked, gazing down at the lake wistfully. “But I’ll admit that I missed this view. It was one thing they could never take away from me.”

“A friend of yours said something similar to me recently.”

Aiden raised an eyebrow. “A friend?”

“Gaetan.”

“So he _is_ still alive,” Aiden said with relief. “I always wondered.”

“Yeah, he’s alive. He’s a real pain in my ass, too.”

Aiden smirked. “The two of you are very much alike.”

“He broke my nose, you know,” Lambert said, probing it with his fingertips. Strangely, it didn’t hurt.

“Did you deserve it?”

Lambert looked away, scowling.

Aiden laughed. “Same old Lambert. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Not exactly the same,” Lambert said quietly. “Not without you.”

“We all lose pieces of ourselves here and there,” Aiden replied, his expression suddenly grave. “It’s part of living. Even more so for those of us that live longer than most.”

The two of them were silent for a moment. The ripples in the water finally reached the lake’s edge, kissing the shore as they broke like miniature waves.

“I’ve been wondering about that,” Lambert said, leaning back against the railing. “If you factor in the fledglings, and the ones who passed the trials but died in their first couple of years on the Path—I’m not so sure the average Witcher lives longer than the average peasant. We’re more like mayflies than anything else. Some of us just got lucky.”

“Ever the optimist.” Aiden stared down into the inky waters of the lake, humming to himself.

“The things Gaetan said about the School of the Cat—were they true?”

Aiden’s face turned stony. “What did he tell you?”

“That you were tortured. That the weak and disobedient were slaughtered before they were even old enough to receive the mutagens. That they beat you down until you broke so that they could rebuild you into something different.”

Aiden sighed heavily. “That was the gist of it, yes.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Would it have mattered?”

“To me? Yes.”

Aiden’s grip on the marble tightened. “I wasn’t always a good man, Lambert. I did a lot of things in my life that I deeply regret. This place…these walls…those memories…” He shook his head. “They’re who I was. Not who I am. Remember me for the man I was when I was with you. Those pieces were the best of me.”

He turned as he spoke, placing the palm of his hand over Lambert’s heart. Lambert covered it with his own and closed his eyes.

“Carry them with you.”

⁂

Lamber awoke with a start to the sensation of someone shaking him. He sat bolt upright, clutching Aiden’s medallion in his fist, clinging desperately to the world of the dream even as it dissolved around him. Try as he might, he failed. It was gone a moment later, leaving only an ache in his chest and a bitter taste in his mouth.

He turned to Ciri, who was kneeling on the ground beside him. “Wha’s wrong?”

“Gaetan is gone,” Geralt said from the other side of the dying fire as he tugged on his boots. “Got no idea where he went.”

“Give you three guesses.” Lambert nodded in the direction of the pile of rubble on the cliffside.

Geralt swore. “I was afraid of that.”

“Do we really have to go get him?” Lambert groaned even as he reached for his swordbelts. “If he’s really that determined to die here, I don’t see any reason not to respect his wishes.”

Ciri rolled her eyes and kicked him softly with the toe of her boot. “We’re going, and so are you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lambert took a gulp from their waterskin and swished it around in his mouth before spitting it on the ground. “Give me a minute to find my boots. At least we know he didn’t go far.”

Several minutes later, buckled and laced into their armor, Lambert, Geralt, and Ciri began the trudge around the lake and up the side of the mountain toward what had once been the front gates of Stygga castle. The path beneath their feet was sandy, and several times Lambert’s boots slipped on screes of loose rock that had accumulated on the steeper portions. It took the better part of an hour to reach the top.

The marble steps and railing where Lambert had stood with Aiden in his dream still remained. The stars had all gone away; the lake beneath them reflected only the clouds in the sky above. Lambert touched the stone for a moment, trying to remember, but dropped his hand just as quickly. Dwelling on the past was exactly what had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

He was right, in the end. It didn’t take them long to locate Gaetan. They found him sifting through the rubble of a ruined tower, his knuckles scraped and bleeding and his clothes and hair smudged white with mortar dust. He looked like the ghost of a brickmaker, Lambert thought to himself. Or like Eskel after he’d spent a day helping Vesemir to patch up a failing wall.

Gaetan didn’t acknowledge the three of them as they approached, only continued heaving chunks of columns and fractured bricks to the side like a madman. He only stopped when Geralt approached him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Gaetan,” Geralt said gently. “This isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

Gaetan shook his head, a manic grin on his face. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“There’s nothing here,” Lambert chimed in.

“You’re wrong.” Gaetan grunted as he lifted a large piece of what had once been a flagstone out of the way.

Ciri frowned. “I must admit I’m lost as well. I don’t see anything.”

“The thing I’m after—” Gaetan paused, huffing, as he threw another chunk of rubble out of the way— “It was kept in a crypt. Deep beneath the castle. I think the elves who built this place cut into the stone of the mountain. And it’s almost impossible to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“And you think it survived whatever happened here,” Lambert, said, his tone colored by disbelief.

“Yeah, I do,” Gaetan replied, shooting him a sharp gaze. “Check your medallions.”

Lambert, Geralt, and Ciri each raised a hand to the silver chains around their necks. There were the faintest of vibrations there, so subtle that any of them would have missed it. The silver responded more strongly to the ambient magic that collected around a Place of Power, or thrummed through the air on a festival night like Beltane. Lambert had seen no reason to pay it any mind.

Gaetan apparently had, though. He pointed to the ground, at the semicircle of cracked flagstones he’d managed to uncover. “This is an illusion; a powerful one. Where we’re standing used to be the bottom of a tower. To anyone else, it would look like a dead end. But—”

“There are stairs under it,” Geralt finished. “Sounds about right.”

“Yeah. So, mind helping me get this shit off it so we can get inside?”

Gaetan went back to clearing away the stone and gravel and cracked ceramic that littered the ground. Geralt stooped down to help him, and Ciri joined a moment later. With a weary sigh, Lambert picked up a chunk of marble and tossed it onto the growing pile of debris.

It was rough but relatively quick work with the four of them working in unison. When the task was finished, Lambert’s undershirt was sticky with sweat, but they had managed to clear the full circle of detritus. Gaetan walked the edges of it, squinting at the ground, clearly growing more frustrated by the moment.

“There were runes here,” he explained, his voice strained, “cut into the stone. But half of them got scraped up by the falling rocks. I can’t read a damn word of it.”

“Might have something we can use,” Geralt said suddenly.

He fumbled with his belt and pockets for a moment before producing a flat stone disk the size of Lambert’s palm. It was intricately carved, with a large, deep X in the center surrounded by runes Lambert didn’t recognize.

“The Eye of Nehaleni,” he said, catching Lambert’s confused look. “Keira gave it to me years ago, when I was searching for Ciri. Almost forgot I had it. Dispels illusions.”

“Let’s see it, then.” Lambert leaned against a large boulder and folded his arms.

Geralt crouched in the center of the circle and pressed the Eye to the ground.

The stone dissolved beneath its touch, bubbling away as if it were being eaten up by acid. As it melted into nothingness, the sheen of an enormous engraved metal seal became visible through the gaps. Lambert straightened up, his eyes widening, as the last of the stone vanished. He knelt to touch the metal, feeling its stinging cold against his fingertips. He would have known this material anywhere. His swords were in part forged from it, after all.

Meteorite steel.

“What the hell?” Geralt muttered, pocketing the Eye and standing.

“It’s a precaution,” Gaetan said distractedly, pacing the circle once more. “To prevent anyone but a witcher from getting inside.”

“Smart,” Lambert admitted. “If we’d had something like that at Kaer Morhen the Salamandra never would’ve gotten their hands on our mutagens.”

“Everything’s clearer in hindsight.” Geralt looked to Gaetan. “Now what?”

“It’s simpler than it looks. We just need to hit it with the Aard—here, here, and there.” He pointed as he spoke, indicating a series of concentric circles inscribed into the seal’s surface. “…Do you mind?”

“Guess not.” Lambert took his indicated place and focused his intention.

“On the count of three, then. One—” Gaetan’s fingers formed the sign of Aard— “Two—” Geralt widened his stance, digging his boots into the ground— _“Three!”_

The three of them drew the Power in unison and let it explode outward. The blast echoed off the cliffside, ringing in Lambert’s ears like an enormous bell being struck with a hammer, and threw a massive column of dust into the air around them. Lambert coughed and stumbled, his eyes watering, wishing he’d had the good sense to plug his ears beforehand. He’d ruptured his eardrums a few too many times to be doing shit like this.

When the dust settled, the seal was fractured across three planes. It had opened like a flower, and inside its gaping maw was a spiraling staircase that led downward into the darkness.

“Told you,” Gaetan said, spitting stone dust onto the ground and wiping his mouth. “It’s still here.”

“You weren’t kidding.” Lambert peered into the crypt, squinting. “Anybody got any Cat?”

“Half a vial.” Geralt pulled it from his belt and frowned. “Won’t last long, split between three people.”

“Not to mention that I can’t ingest it,” Ciri reminded him. “There’s a torch, there. Just inside.”

Gaetan descended a few steps and removed it from its bracket, touching the burnt end of it and frowning. “Someone’s been here.”

“I mean, I thought that was a given,” Lambert said with a shrug.

“Someone’s been here _recently,_ ” Gaetan hissed. “As in, in the last few years. It’s been more than a decade since I set foot in this castle. Our kind abandoned it long ago.”

“What does that mean for us?” Ciri asked, raising a hand to the hilt of her sword.

“Dunno.” Gaetan shook his head. “Guess we’ll find out. C’mon.”

With a growing sense of apprehension, the four of them descended into the darkness.

⁂

“Gods _damn it!”_ Gaetan shouted, upending a table covered in vials and alembics in rage. The sound of its contents clanging and shattering as they smashed into the walls and floor echoed off the walls of the crypt.

Lambert ducked to avoid getting hit by a flying decanter and swore. “Knock it off, asshole!”

“Give it a rest, you two,” Ciri scolded.

Gaetan balled his hands up into fists, seething. _“It’s not here._ Someone beat me to it.”

“No shit,” Lambert snapped back. “What the hell are we looking for, anyway? You weren’t exactly clear about that. How the hell are we supposed to help you search if we don’t even know what it looks like?”

Gaetan ground his teeth and swore foully in elvish. “It was a Lexicon. A book older than both our schools, containing precise instructions on how to make a witcher. If you believe my elders, it was written by Alzur himself. Piece of shit wizard.”

“Didn’t know anyone had written it down,” Geralt said quietly. “Our school passed on the knowledge by oral tradition. Those secrets died with Vesemir.”

 _Good,_ Lambert thought to himself. Not that any of the four remaining Wolves would have ever entertained the possibility of making more of them. Enough was enough.

“They wrote it down, alright,” Gaetan said sourly. “The chambers they used for the trials are down here somewhere. I remember that book. I remember it sitting on the table an arm’s length away while the Grasses burned through my body and my friends died around me. It’s not the kind of thing you forget.”

“What the hell were you going to do with it even if we did find it?” Lambert said incredulously.

“What do you think?” Gaetan replied, looking back at him as if he were slow in the head. “Burn it. The last thing I ever wanted was for someone else to get their hands on it. Don’t forget—not all my brothers were as sweet and rosy as yours truly.”

“So what do we do now?” Ciri said from the table she was perched on in the corner, out of the way of the destruction.

Gaetan shook his head, muttering under his breath, rubbing his palms against the stubble that was growing in on his head anxiously as he paced back and forth.

“Unbelievable,” Lambert muttered, wishing that he’d had the foresight to bring a flask with him.

Gaetan continued pacing and spouting angry nonsense until he suddenly stopped short, his boots scuffing the stone floor. There was a furious glint to his eye.

“Jad Karadin.”

“Karadin?” Lambert repeated in disbelief, feeling the knot of rage he felt every time he heard the man’s name settle into his stomach.

“He’s the only one who could have taken it. Aiden wouldn’t have come here. The Nilfgaardians hanged Joël. Axel and Cedric died when the castle was taken. Kiyan’s been missing for decades. Schrödinger fled to Ofier and never came back. That just leaves me and Jad.”

“Just a little problem with that,” Lambert reminded him. “I killed him, remember? Anything valuable he owned probably got looted from his house the second word got out he was dead.”

“Where was he when you tracked him down?”

“Novigrad. Posing as a rich philanthropist while he traded in live goods on the sly and probably masterminded a few assassinations and burglaries in his spare time.”

“Novigrad,” Gaetan groaned. “That’s halfway across the damn Continent.”

“It’s been years!” Lambert threw out his hands in exasperation. “What the hell makes you think this Lexicon is even still there? It could be in Zerrikania by now for all we know.”

“Maybe not,” Geralt said thoughtfully. “Met a man there, once—called himself the King of Beggars. Every thief in the city has to pay tribute to him or face the consequences. If the book got stolen, chances are good that it crossed his desk at some point. Might be able to call in a favor, find out where it went.”

“You’re kidding,” Lambert said flatly.

Geralt shrugged. “Best I got.”

“We’re really doing this?” He looked around the room in disbelief. “What happened to a quick jaunt down to Ebbing? We’re really going to trek halfway to the Blue Mountains to chase after something that’s probably not even there? Novigrad’s about the last place on the Continent I want to be right now. There’s a war on, in case you’d forgotten, and I can’t said I’m too fond of their take on bonfires. Let’s not.”

“If you can’t be arsed it ain’t my problem,” Gaetan growled back. “I’m going. Feel free to crawl on back to your sorceress. I don’t see anyone trying to stop you.”

“Don’t you fucking high road me,” Lambert snarled, advancing on Gaetan as anger flared hot in his chest. “As if I didn’t put my boots back on the damned Path and let you drag me all the way here. I carried my weight, just like everyone else—and we failed anyway. There’s nothing here!”

He gestured wildly around the crypt as Geralt looked on silently and Ciri shifted in discomfort. He felt a flash of vindication. He was right, and they knew it.

Gaetan looked as if he were struggling with the urge to put his sword through Lambert’s chest. He sagged a moment later, all of the fight going out of him in an instant. “I can’t accept that.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

“Maybe.” Gaetan shrugged. “But I’ll take that over being a coward.”

He turned without another word, leaving them behind in the darkness.

⁂

Gaetan didn’t return to camp that night.

His effects were still there, as was his horse, but the man himself never appeared, even as the night wore on and the fire began to die. Lambert, Geralt, and Ciri huddled around the embers as they glowed, keeping watch long past when the three of them would usually have succumbed to sleep.

Despite himself, Lambert felt guilty. Gaetan infuriated him, true; he was difficult to be around and even more so to travel with, but he didn’t deserve all of this. A crumbling keep, a baker’s dozen of dead brethren, and the dubious legacy of his school vanished out from under his grasping fingers. Once his anger had cooled a bit, Lambert could almost understand. He’d felt many of those things himself, over the years. He hadn’t been easy to travel with, either.

He thought dully of all the times he had attempted to run away from Kaer Morhen over the years, only to be dragged back, kicking and screaming, starving and covered in cuts and bruises, a few days later. He thought about how none of that had ever seemed to matter to Geralt or Eskel, who had always accepted him back without another word and taken his volatile moods in stride. Or to Ciri, who against all odds seemed to even look up to him at times. Gods knew what he’d done to deserve that.

Lambert wasn’t the easiest guy to live with, and neither was Gaetan. Still, as the wind picked up and he shivered as the chill drove away what remained of the heat of the fire, he couldn’t help but wish the other was there. Things felt oddly imbalanced with one of their number missing. What he wouldn’t have given to hear Gaetan’s damnable snoring from the other side of the fire.

Maybe then he would be able to sleep.

⁂

Gaetan’s bedroll was still empty when dawn broke, weak and straining, on the horizon.

Lambert, Geralt, and Ciri breakfasted on hardtack and fatback, the monotony of the meal broken up by a handful of blackberries collected on the way back from the ruins the previous evening. None of them were willing to voice the question that was surely on all their minds—what if Gaetan didn’t come back at all?

Through some small mercy they were spared having to answer. He did return, though late in the morning, a grim expression on his face and three hares strung on a length of twine slung over his shoulder. He passed the meat to Geralt wordlessly and knelt by the fire, rubbing his hands together over what remained of the coals.

“I’m packing my things,” he said after a moment, “and I’m riding north. The three of you don’t have to come along—you’ve done plenty already. But I’m going. I don’t have a choice.”

No other words were spoken, even as Geralt tied the hares to Roach’s saddle and extinguished the fire. Not as Ciri darted off to the stream that fed the lake to refill their waterskins. Not as Lambert reluctantly began to pack his bedroll and rifle through his potion stock.

They rode out that evening with Gaetan in the lead. Lambert trailed reluctantly behind, caught once more in the pull of destiny’s tide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beautiful artwork for this chapter by [umikochannart](https://twitter.com/umikochannart?lang=en)!
> 
> I worked a 12 yesterday and by the time I got home my brain was so fried I forgot to update. Sorry about that.
> 
> This chapter, melancholic as it is, was a lot of fun to write. I did most of it sitting out in my hammock in the earliest days of spring. It felt wonderful have Aiden back, if only for a scene. I hope you enjoyed it :)
> 
> (Update delayed to 10/19 due to computer issues. Sorry about that! See you next week <3)


	7. The Last Rose of Cintra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by [bookscorpion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion)!

The journey north was long and arduous.

With a new destination in mind, the witchers opted to take a more direct route than the one they had traversed on their outward journey. Rather than keeping to Ebbing’s western border and curving north toward Metinna, they rode East, giving the Pereplut marshes a wide berth, and forded the river Sylte at the large crossing by the sea. It was but a day’s ride from there to the Yelena, which they crossed by way of a rickety bridge that had certainly seen better days, and with that, for one bittersweet and fleeting moment, they were home in Nazair.

Though they were far from Assengard, the sight of its trademark violet roses was a balm for Lambert. He toyed with the idea of breaking from the pack, of riding east until he finally reached those crumbling city walls and his horse’s hooves struck crimson pavers, but found he didn’t have the backbone. There was enough that kept him awake at night already. He had no choice in the matter—he was going to see this through.

The four of them continued northward, passing through a gap in the Amell mountains which had once been a massive riverbed or perhaps a sea, and emerging, found themselves in what had once been Cintra.

The kingdom of the Lioness had fallen long ago, when Ciri was naught but a child and the rest of the Northern Realms had had no inkling of the years of strife that were yet to befall them. Though it was no longer the jewel of the north, the scars of war had been largely erased from the land by the tireless efforts of Emhyr’s engineers. New stone roads had been built overtop the old muddy ones, and many of the small thatch-roofed villages had been rebuilt in the intervening years. It was a new kingdom: one for the new era. Emhyr’s lasting legacy.

They made camp that night in a thicket on the edge of Erlenwald. The forest was dark, its trees gnarled and ancient, their trunks overgrown with climbing ivy that filled in the gaps of the canopy above so that the stars themselves were snuffed out.

Ciri, who had been notably silent since crossing the border, sat brooding against a tree trunk far from the fire that night. Geralt let her alone, something which had struck Lambert as odd, and busied himself instead with butchering the doe he and Gaetan had hunted for their supper.

After a time, Lambert put aside his whetstone, having accepted that his sword wasn’t going to be getting any sharper than it already was, and crossed the clearing to join her. He settled beside her in the hollow formed by the roots of the tree, stretching out one leg, and sighed.

The two of them sat in silence for a time, watching Geralt and Gaetan skinning their kill, before Lambert finally spoke.

“Something eating you?”

“Have a guess,” Ciri replied with a reproachful glance. “It’s…strange, being here. I haven’t been back since my grandmother died.”

“That was early in the war,” Lambert said, hoping he was remembering the details correctly. He’d never paid much mind to the affairs of kings unless they interfered with his life directly, which certainly wasn’t as often as it seemed to be in Geralt’s case.

Ciri nodded. “When my father’s men sacked the city. I’m…told she took her own life when the castle fell. It was the merciful thing.” Her tone had the bitter sting of nettles.

“War is never merciful.” Lambert frowned. “The village I was born in is long gone. It was destroyed when Kaedwen took Lormark. Not that it was any great loss.”

Ciri hummed in acknowledgment. “You know, I could almost make out the city walls as we crested that rise this morning. It’s…hmm. I never wished to rule, but Cintra was my kingdom. I was born to rule it. It feels odd to glimpse your old life from a distance and find that the world has continued to go on in your absence.”

Lambert could sympathize with that. He felt it acutely each time they rode through a village and there were children playing jacks on hard-packed earth, or toiling in the fields bringing in the harvest, or trailing their parents at the market stalls. It wasn’t the life itself he lamented—his had been far from perfect, after all—but rather, the lack of choice he’d had in giving it up. And the consequences reaped from the seeds of destiny’s betrayal.

“He offered it to me, you know,” Ciri remarked, her gaze unfocused. “I suppose he thought it would entice me to power. As though I could stand where my grandmother stood and pretend nothing had happened.”

Lambert stretched out an arm and wrapped it around her, and a moment later she leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Families are strange, aren’t they?” She wiped at her eyes.

“In my experience the people you choose are worth a hell of a lot more than the ones that were chosen for you.” Lambert hugged her closer. “You don’t have to see Emhyr unless it’s what you want. You know that, right?”

“I know.” Ciri sniffled. “I…he’s trying. He never meant for my mother to die—I see such grief on his face whenever he hears her name—but he’s done so many horrible things. It’s hard to forgive him.”

“You don’t have to do that, either.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I’m not certain that I want to. But I’d still like to give him a chance. I’ll never be his heir—I’ve made that clear, and though he wasn’t pleased I do believe he’s accepted it now. But I’d like to give him another chance to be my father.” She twisted a strand of her ashen hair between two fingers. “He…when I was small, he was kind. He would carry me on his back through the castle, and read stories to me each night. He truly loved my mother, and I felt that he loved me, too.”

“That doesn’t excuse the things he’s done,” Lambert said bitterly, thinking of his own father.

“No. But there _was_ good in him. I’d like to see if it’s still there.”

The two of them sat in silence for a time, listening to the crackling of the fire and the rustling of the leaves overhead. Geralt and Gaetan finished picking apart the deer, placed the meat on a spit, and hoisted it over the fire.

“Hey,” Lambert said thoughtfully. “Want to help me dig up some potatoes? I think I saw some growing near here on the ride in.”

Ciri smiled wanly. “Sure.”

Lambert helped her to her feet, and together the two of them went off in search of tubers and herbs to add to the meal. Lambert, eager to distract, taught Ciri how to identify a potato plant by its violet, star-shaped flowers and small, flat leaves. He’d always had a knack for foraging, something he could thank his peasant life for. It was one skill that had translated well to witchering. He was never at a loss for potion ingredients.

Together, they turned up a handful of fist-sized purple potatoes and even some wild garlic and rosemary. Lambert and Ciri wrapped their spoils in a scrap of cloth and carried them back to camp, where Lambert carefully poked the herbs into the roasting meat and buried the potatoes in the coals at the edge of the fire. They would come out a bit charred, but still good enough in his book.

“Did you know potatoes are nightshades?” He said to Ciri as he covered the last one, turning to her with a grin.

Ciri rolled her eyes. “Uncle Vesemir taught me that my first month at Kaer Morhen.”

“Did he now?” Geralt said, sitting down beside the fire with a weary groan and rubbing his knee. “Any other useful advice from Uncle Vesemir?”

“Loads,” Ciri said, smiling. “All useful, despite my not being able to take your potions. A little tincture of beggartick, for example, to ease pain. I’ve had to make use of that more often than I would have liked.”

“Haven’t we all.” Gaetan flopped down unceremoniously next to Lambert. “Shame that the herbalists who came up with this stuff never bothered thinking up something for scars.”

Ciri touched her fingertips to the one that marred her face. “I’ve grown used to it. I even like it, in a way, though it took quite some time to heal. It’s a good reminder of the hardships I’ve survived. And it does make me look…hmm…less damsel-y.”

Gaetan laughed. “You’re about the furthest thing from a damsel I’ve met.”

“Thank you.” Ciri grinned back.

Dinner passed quietly, as the lot of them were too busy stuffing their faces to chat. Though Lambert found himself wishing they had butter on hand for the potatoes, they were hot and sweet, and the thin layer of char on the skins had a satisfying crunch. The venison was as good as he’d had on the Path—fragrant and tender, and smoky from the campfire. It was a good meal; the sort which was hard to come by these days and best enjoyed in the company of friends.

The liquor flowed freely when at last they’d eaten their fill—the last of the Nazairi vodka was soon gone, and afterward Lambert happened upon a bottle of Temerian pepper that he had stashed at the bottom of his saddlebag. Geralt managed to turn up some rye whiskey and half a bottle of Redanian herbal he had hidden away in his potion stock. 

By witcher standards, it was a veritable feast. The four of them sipped and supped and whiled away the time as the stars whirled by invisibly overhead, swapping stories and ribbing each other good-naturedly. Lambert couldn’t remember things feeling so _normal_ since they’d left Nazair. They were just missing Eskel.

When he fell asleep—or more aptly, passed out in the general vicinity of his bedroll—that night, his heart felt the fullest it had been in years.

⁂

The sun rose bright and vengeful the next morning, managing to shine through the tiniest chink in the canopy above and directly into Lambert’s eyes. He groaned as the light stabbed into the beginnings of his hangover and rolled over to stoke the coals. It was still several days’ ride to Novigrad, with an advancing army standing between them and their destination.

“Geralt,” he said hoarsely.

The other man grumbled and rolled over.

“Geralt,” he tried again, louder, wincing at the volume of his own voice. He fumbled for a pebble and chucked it in Geralt’s direction.

It bounced off his forehead. “Fuck you,” Geralt groaned. “ ‘m gonna be sick.”

“It’s morning. We gotta move.”

“Not goin’ anywhere…still drunk. ‘f I get on a horse, we’re all gonna regret it.”

“Damn. And I thought Ciri was the lightweight…”

“Shut up.” Geralt rolled onto his back, looking decidedly green around the gills. “Got any White Honey?”

“Afraid not. Even if I had the ingredients, it’d take a few hours to do it right. You’re gonna have to get through this the old-fashioned way.”

“Hair of the dog?”

“Suffering.”

Geralt chuckled and then groaned again. “ ‘m going back to sleep.”

“Suit yourself.”

Lambert wasn’t feeling all that fantastic himself, but he was well enough to move, at least. Some water and a bath in the nearby stream would probably do him some good. He dragged himself over to his bags and fished out a cake of soap wrapped in a piece of waxed cloth before heading off toward the sound of burbling water.

A short walk found him at the water’s edge. Fortune was on his side for once, it seemed. Someone, likely a local hunter, had stacked a number of smooth river rocks to construct a partial dam and deepen a natural pool in the creek bed. The builder had likely intended to fish in the deeper water, but the pool would serve Lambert just as well as a bathtub.

He stripped out of his clothes, draping them over the branch of a nearby tree, and left his boots and swordbelts resting on a flat rock by the river’s edge. Experience had taught him that if he was going to get caught with his pants down, he’d do well to keep those things well within reach. Trousers were easy enough to obtain—he could always buy new ones, or lacking coin, steal some off a clothesline. Boots were expensive, though, and his swords especially would have been almost impossible to replace. Meteorite steel was becoming harder and harder to find with the passing years, and smiths with the skill to forge witchers’ blades were even rarer.

The chilly water stung Lambert’s skin as he stepped into the pool. Though the days had been growing steadily warmer as they traveled, it was still only early spring. The water that swelled the creek almost to the point of overflowing its banks had recently been snowmelt higher up in the mountains. It was warmer than the rivers in Kaer Morhen valley in the dead of winter, but that wasn’t much of an accomplishment as Lambert saw it. More often than not, when he’d gone to fetch a bucket from the well it would have frozen over before he made it back inside the castle doors.

Temperature aside, he couldn’t deny that he had needed this badly. Two weeks in the saddle with few opportunities to rest had left the four of them reeking of sweat, horse, and desperation. 

Lambert lathered the cake of soap, feeling the dried cloves that studded it scrape against his palm, and scrubbed himself like he was trying to take his skin off. The relief of being clean, of watching the dirt and grime of the Path wash downriver with the soap he rinsed from his skin, was immeasurable. It certainly wasn’t the baths at the palace in Assengard, but he was appreciative nonetheless.

He took a deep breath and ducked his head underwater, scrubbing at his scalp with his fingernails.

When he broke the surface again, he wasn’t alone.

Lambert reached for the hilt of his sword reflexively, cursing and rubbing soap out of his eye, but the pinched laugh that came afterward identified the new arrival as a non-threat. Or at least not enough of a threat to merit drawing steel, Lambert amended, dropping the sword back on the rock with a clatter.

Gaetan stood above him on the bank, clearly amused at Lambert’s predicament. “What’d you think I was, a water hag?”

“I’m not in the habit of waiting until I can see a dick to rule it out,” Lambert retorted as Gaetan shucked off his own clothes. “Figured you’d be out cold for at least a couple more hours.”

Gaetan shrugged. “I bounce back easy.”

Lambert drifted toward the far edge of the rock pool so he could stay submerged a while, resting on a stone that jutted out just beneath the surface of the water. When Gaetan turned to hang his clothes on a low-hanging branch, Lambert couldn’t help but stare. He wasn’t all that bad-looking, all things considered. Though his head was shaved bald, the hair that dusted his chest and stomach was a warm light brown. His body, like Lambert’s, was covered in odd scars that pulled and stretched with the flex of his muscles. There was a particularly nasty one on his right flank, angry and red, that could only have been from the infamous pitchfork incident in Honorton.

Gaetan turned, and Lambert tore his gaze away quickly. What the hell was he doing, anyway? Was a fortnight’s dry spell really all it took for him to lose his standards? He barely even liked the guy. No point in ogling him like a fresh piece of meat.

He slapped himself mentally and waded back to shore, dropping the hunk of soap back into its cloth and rinsing his hands once more before climbing out of the water. 

The breeze, though warmer by far than the water itself, made him shiver as he wiped the water from his skin and retrieved his trousers. He was halfway done lacing up the front when the sound of a branch snapping underfoot startled him out of his reverie.

“I can see I’m not the only one who had this idea,” Ciri’s voice said from behind a nearby tree. “Shame you’ve beaten me to it.”

“You can come out,” Lambert called back, doing up the last of the ties. “I’m decent.”

“You’re _never_ decent,” she replied with a laugh, stepping out into the sunlight.

“Morning, witcheress,” Gaetan said with a nod from where he stood waist deep in the pool.

“Good morning. You seem in rather good spirits. I would have expected you to be in worse shape than Geralt given how much you drank last night.”

“I’ve always been good at rolling with the punches.” Gaetan grinned. “Planning on joining us?”

Ciri snorted. “A tempting offer, but I think I shall find my own spot. I’ll see the two of you a little later on.”

“Suit yourself.” Gaetan returned to scrubbing himself.

Lambert tugged on his boots as Ciri wandered off along the water’s edge in search of a more private bathing spot, and then pulled on his shirt. He collected the rest of his possessions from where they rested on the flat rock and headed back in the direction of their little camp.

He couldn’t be certain of it, but as he went he thought he felt the sensation of Gaetan’s eyes on the back of his neck.

⁂

The day passed slowly. By the time Geralt managed to haul himself into a sitting position, enough time had passed that it seemed pointless to continue onward. Though their task was urgent, Gaetan knew just as well as the rest of them that what they sought had likely already been gone from its hiding place for years. A day or two lost wasn’t going to make a lick of difference.

And they had been in constant motion since leaving Assengard—a memory which now seemed impossibly far away to Lambert. He needed the rest. They all did. Some time to breathe, to brew potions over the fire, to sit sharpening his swords and think of Keira, whom he’d genuinely come to miss. It was hard, sleeping alone. Her sharp wit and soft lips had come to be a near-constant presence in Lambert’s life over the past few years. He never realized until he could no longer avail himself of those comforts just how much he relied on them.

He’d have to do something for her when all of this was over. Something nice. Maybe a bottle of perfume from Toussaint, he mused. There had to be at least one merchant in the city who—

An acorn bounced off the side of his head, interrupting his train of thought. He glanced up from his blade, half irritated and half bemused, to see Ciri standing on the far side of the clearing with her hands on her hips.

“What?”

“You’ve got that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“Face you make when you’re having an idea that’s too big for your head,” Geralt said feebly from where he sat slumped against a tree trunk.

“Fuck off,” Lambert said amicably, and continued working the oil-soaked rag over his steel.

Another acorn.

He sighed and looked up. “Quit it.”

“I’m sick to death of meditating,” Ciri said. “Let’s spar.”

“You know what Papa Vesemir would say?”

“Practice your footwork,” came Geralt’s voice from the ground nearby.

Lambert gestured in his direction.

Ciri rolled her eyes. “Unless you plan on constructing me a pendulum with which to dance—”

“I’ll spar,” Gaetan said, getting to his feet. “I’ve been wanting to see how I measure up to Kaer Morhen’s best and onliest witcheress. Let’s do it.”

Lambert raised both eyebrows as he went back to his polishing. “Good luck. You’re gonna need it.”

Ciri drew her sword with a grin as the two took their places on the far side of the clearing. “I’ve never fought a witcher from another school before.”

Gaetan grinned back. “Signs or no signs?”

“You can use signs,” she said, her eyes glinting dangerously, “if you really think they’ll help you.”

They were upon each other with a rapid flash and clang of steel. Gaetan fought much the same as Aiden had—light on his feet, favoring speed and flexibility over strength. The style of combat taught by the School of the Cat had always been more like dancing than swordplay. Lambert could almost imagine, as he watched Gaetan whirl and spin around the clearing, that he was watching Aiden instead. He’d grown accustomed to falling into the steps of that dance, ducking and countering to fill in the gaps between attacks, as their hearts thudded in sync.

Ciri fought like a Wolf; or near enough, anyway. Her reflexes weren’t quite as fast as theirs, but she made up for it by being unpredictable. Her own style incorporated elements from the fencing lessons of her youth in Cintra and the wild, desperate frenzy of the outlaws she had once traveled with. She had picked up a number of bad habits from them too, Lambert thought to himself with a shake of his head. A drowner couldn’t tell if a blow was signaled, but another swordsman sure as shit could.

The match was cautious at first, as the two of them tested each other’s defenses and range. With each clash of steel on steel, each rapid step in the dance, they became more brazen. Ciri’s damp hair whirled around her as she spun to parry Gaetan’s blade and riposted to the crown of his head. He sidestepped, ducking low to sweep her legs out from under her, but she rolled with the motion and was back on her feet before he was.

Steel on steel. Labored breath. A flash of green eyes.

Neither of them could land a blow on the other. Gaetan’s expression was contorted with focus. Ciri’s was exhilarated. She wore a grin that only grew wider with each successful dodge and counter.

“She’s getting cocky,” Geralt muttered.

“Eh, let her.” Lambert shrugged. “Might do one of them some good to be knocked down a peg or two.”

“Long as they don’t end up killing each other.” Geralt fumbled for the waterskin and took a swig, looking as if he were still undecided on whether or not he wanted to vomit.

Gaetan and Ciri locked blades with a screech of metal. Gaetan drew the sign of Aard, forcing Ciri back with a grunt, and began to circle her like a panther closing in on its prey. Ciri stood still, her blade at the ready, tracking him with her gaze as her grin grew wider.

Lambert set aside his oil and rag. “Here’s where he fucks it up.”

Gaetan lunged forward, his blade poised to strike the final blow.

Ciri vanished.

She flickered back into existence an instant later in a flash of green light, not quite solid, and kicked Gaetan squarely between the shoulder blades. He stumbled forward, losing his balance, but managed to roll and regain his footing at the last instant. He whirled to counter, but she was gone again. And again. And again.

Ciri blinked in and out of solidity, attacking Gaetan from all sides in an unpredictable onslaught. To his credit, he managed to parry most of her attacks, though she did land a solid one blow to his thigh with the flat of her blade that almost brought him to his knees.

Faster and faster they spun and danced and slashed, until Lambert could hardly tell who was who. For a time, it seemed as though the match would end in a draw—

Ciri blinked into existence one last time and brought the pommel of her sword down hard on Gaetan’s wrist.

His blade fell to the ground with a thud. An instant later, the point of hers was at the hollow of his throat.

Gaetan held up his hands in defeat. “I yield.”

Ciri smiled, sheathing her blade, and helped him to his feet. “That was fun. Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Wouldn’t have said ‘fun,’ but…” Gaetan shook his head. “Damn. I’ve seen more than most and I’ve never seen anyone fight like that. Definitely not a witcher. Not any mages, either. You fight more like a bruxa than anything else.”

“I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment,” Ciri said with some amusement, flopping to the ground near Lambert and wiping the sweat from her forehead.

“You know what I meant. It’s like you were teleporting, but teleportation is usually slow.”

Ciri shot a significant glance at Lambert and Geralt, who both shrugged in turn, and then looked at Gaetan like she was sizing him up. “I’m a Child of the Elder Blood.”

Gaetan looked blankly back at her for a moment and then whistled through his teeth. “Yeah, guess that’d do it. I always figured the legends were just that—legends.”

“I can do other things, too,” Ciri said. “I can navigate the gaps between worlds, though it’s exhausting and difficult to control. It also attracts attention to me, so I prefer not to when it can be avoided.” She frowned. “There was a sage once, who was helping me learn, but he turned out to be a heartless slug. I’m glad to be rid of him.”

“Can’t say I miss him either,” Geralt muttered.

“Besides,” Ciri said, brightening up, “this is far more useful for a witcher’s life. I can almost imitate the signs—Keira has been trying to teach me how—and failing that, being able to teleport makes up for most of my disadvantages. I don’t advertise it, but I think I can trust you.”

Gaetan grinned. “I’m flattered.”

“It will be different when we get to Novigrad.” Ciri hummed thoughtfully. “If the things I’ve heard are true, anything we do to draw attention to ourselves will put us all in jeopardy. If we run afoul of the Temple Guard, it won’t matter in the slightest how righteous our cause is, and I don’t care to test whether or not I can escape dimeritium shackles while they’re lighting my pyre. So, please—do keep this to yourself.”

“My lips are sealed.” Gaetan lay back on the mossy ground with a sigh. “Don’t forget, I’m a wanted man myself.”

“And there’s an army standing between us and the city,” Lambert added. “We should step carefully.”

That was a sobering thought. The four of them lapsed into silence, mentally measuring up their odds if they found themselves caught between the advancing Nilfgaardian front and the rogue Redanian soldiers who were still fighting a war that had long been lost.

“We’ll give them a wide berth,” Geralt said. “Done it before. We’ll cross the Pontar to the east and approach the city from the Arette side. And if we have to, we’ll fight our way across.”

Lambert sincerely hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice to have a little moment to breathe. I really love Lambert and Ciri's relationship, so it was fun giving them some time to interact in this chapter. Not to mention Gaetan getting his ass (rightfully) kicked again. 
> 
> Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoyed it!


	8. Murky Waters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read as always by [bookscorpion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion)!
> 
> Additional content warnings apply for this chapter. Please check the end note for details, or continue reading if you don't want to be spoiled :)

A number of days passed without incident as the witchers traveled slowly north. They bore to the western edge of Temeria as they rode, passing through fields and villages that had emerged like phoenixes from the ashes of war. For every burnt out husk of a cottage by the side of the road, there was a new one being constructed, the mud between its logs drying in the sun, and for every torn battlefield of churned earth there was another sprouting wheat.

It was strange how the landscapes changed with time. Lambert had seen more wars than he cared to remember in his long life. He wondered absently if the common folk noticed, or if they were so absorbed in the machinations of their daily lives that they simply didn’t care. For the small villages, it mattered not what king claimed ownership of the land on which they sat. Nothing changed save the colors of the coat of arms borne by the soldiers who came to collect taxes and demand their grain stores.

They had passed through Sodden a few days past. There had been a time when it had been a place of power, the last bastion of defense standing between the North and the advancing Nilfgaardian threat. The scorched earth, melted in some places into glass, now had blades of grass poking through it. The memorial to the Fourteen who had given their lives on Sodden Hill still stood, but in time that, too would weather away to nothing.

Time moved inexorably forward. One day it would forget the witchers too, and the castles and keeps that had once housed their schools would crumble away into nothing.

As far as Lambert was concerned, that day couldn’t come soon enough.

The four of them finally came to rest at a small inn on the border of Redania, half a day’s ride from Novigrad. The landscape, as they rode, had become gradually less and less forgiving. The fields and forests here still bore the scars of war, and the wounds were recent. Occasionally, the burnt-down villages they rode past were still smoking. There was precious little in the way to forage or hunt. The soldiers had taken it all to fill their bellies. Even the trees had been taken, chopped down and planed to construct wagons and siege engines.

The fall of Novigrad was nigh. Even the great free city couldn’t stand against Emhyr’s will for long. Lambert sincerely hoped that by the time its walls finally came tumbling down that he and the others would be far, far away.

What remained of Redania’s armies still held the Pontar, if only for the moment. The four of them had little chance of crossing unaccosted, even if they chose to ford the river rather than passing through a checkpoint. Ciri’s letter of safe conduct would do nothing for them here. The emperor’s signature carried no weight with Redanian soldiers.

The inn, it seemed, was neutral enough ground. The locals greeted Lambert and the others with wary gazes, but said nothing as they seated themselves at a table in the back corner.

“I wonder if we can get a decent bath here,” Ciri said, looking around at the wreaths of dried flowers hung on the walls. “I’m sick to death of cold water.”

“Doesn’t hurt to ask,” Lambert replied. His sore muscles privately agreed with her. He could use a good long soak in water that didn’t make his cock shrivel up when he sat in it.

The innkeep, a plump, sallow-faced woman with greying hair, wandered over to their table. “What d’you be wanting?”

“What’s fresh?” Geralt asked.

“I’ve only dumplins and broth, I’m afraid. Soldiers took everythin’ else.”

“Some of that, then. And some ale.”

The innkeep nodded. “And the rest of you?”

“Same for me,” Lambert said. Ciri and Gaetan nodded in unison.

“Do you have any rooms?” Ciri asked.

She looked the four of them up and down with a sour expression. “Two rooms. Hundred crowns a night.”

Lambert scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Doin’ a kindness, puttin’ up your kind at all.” She folded her arms.

“Four rooms for fifty,” Geralt countered. “Plus the cost of our meals.”

She shook her head. “You’d be robbing me blind.”

“Three rooms,” Ciri suggested. “Geralt and I can share. They needn’t be anything special.”

“Sixty-five. And the coin up front.”

“Done.”

Coin changed hands. The innkeep bit one of the crowns, and having satisfied herself that it was real, tucked the rest into her bosom.

“What about a bath?” Ciri said, digging in her pockets.

The woman considered. “Fiver and I’ll have the lads fetch up some water.”

“Please,” Ciri said with a smile, counting out the coins.

Lambert added five more to the pile. “Me as well.”

“Good,” The innkeep said with a nod, and wandered off to fetch the food and ale.

“Charming lady,” Lambert said as soon as she was out of earshot, his voice thick with sarcasm.

Gaetan shrugged. “Gotta take what we can get.”

“Things will improve once we get to Novigrad,” Geralt said, cracking his neck. “We can stay at Dandelion’s place. No one there’ll give a rat’s ass what we are.”

Lambert shook his head. “Maybe, but I doubt that holds true for the rest of the city. We might as well have targets painted on our backs.”

“Cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Way things are looking, we’re gonna come to it awful soon,” Lambert warned. “But fine. I’m too tired to argue.”

The innkeep returned in short order with food and ale, and the witchers nodded their gratitude.

“By the by,” Gaetan said as she doled out wooden bowls of dumplings, “We’re headed for Novigrad. What’s the best way to cross the Pontar these days?”

She shook her head. “Won’t do you no good. City’s under a… _damn._ What d’you call it? Quarternine.”

“Novigrad’s under quarantine?” Geralt said, raising an eyebrow.

“Aye, haven’t heard? There’s been an outbreak of Catriona. Folk’re dyin’ left and right. Surprised you didn’ smell the pits when you rode in. We’re near ‘nough that you can see the smoke, most nights.”

“Shit,” Lambert muttered.

“Anyhoo, only way in’s with special papers,” she continued.

“And where would we get some of those?” Gaetan said, leaning in.

The innkeep shrugged. “I’ve no desire to go meself, so I wouldn’ know. You can ask the ealdorman if you wish. ‘E lives in the last house on the left.”

“Thank you,” Ciri said with a warm smile.

“Catriona?” Lambert hissed as soon as the woman was gone. “This keeps getting worse and worse. I wonder if Keira knows…”

“If she doesn’t already, she’ll find out soon enough,” Geralt replied. “We’ll contact her once we arrive.”

“She’s not gonna be happy.”

“No, she’s not,” Geralt agreed. “Be helpful to have her with us, though. Never hurts to have a sorceress in your corner.”

“Yeah, yeah, we all know how you feel about sorceresses. Spare me the juicy details this once.”

Geralt rolled his eyes and started on his dumplings, making a face as he chewed on the first bite. Lambert understood why as soon as he tried his own—the cook had salted the broth within an inch of its life, and the dumplings were stiff and rubbery. Calling it edible was charitable, and he was certainly going to finish the meal thirstier than when he’d started. That was probably the point, he realized a moment later. The damnable hag was willing to poison half her customers to sell more ale.

What little enjoyment there was to be had in the meal was fleeting. When Lambert had finished as much of his bowl as he could stomach and drained his mug of sour ale, he stood, pushing his bench back from the table.

“Sun’s not quite down. I’m gonna go talk to the ealdorman while I have the chance.”

“I’ll come with you,” Gaetan said, pushing his own bowl away. “I don’t think I’m missing much here.”

“Suit yourself.”

The two of them exited the inn and meandered down a dry dirt path lined with sad patches of limp parsnip plants. The way was unlit, except for the subtle glow of cooking fires glimpsed through the windows of the sparse cottages that made up the little village. After a time they arrived at what had to be the ealdorman’s cottage—a small hut on the edge of the wood which stood out from the others only in that its door had been painted red. There could be no mistake that it was the last of the houses that lined the narrow road. Beyond it, the trees swallowed everything up.

Lambert banged on the door, which was answered by a rail-thin man with wispy hair and wide eyes. He resembled an owlet more than anything else, though Lambert kept that observation to himself. Gaetan stayed behind him, observing silently as Lambert went through the motions of explaining what they were and why they had come. When he asked after the travel papers, the man only shook his head.

“Redanian soldiers’re the only ones who can dole those out, I’m afraid. Last feller we sent to them never came back. Reckon he was either conscripted or killed. Didn’t bother tryin’ to find out which.”

“Is there any witchers’ work?” Lambert asked, frowning. “Any monsters they might be grateful to us for taking out? I kind of doubt they can spare the men right now.”

The ealdorman shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt to ask. They’ve a garrison near the river—there’s a barge moored a few miles down the road through the wood. I’d wager they’ve more’n a few problems with all the bodies they’ve been burnin’.”

“We’ll look into that,” Lambert said with a nod. “Thanks.”

“Witcher?” the ealdorman said as they turned to go.

Lambert paused and looked back.

“Don’t stay here too long. Folk’re restless. You’re unlikely to find any friends among them.”

“…Noted.”

Lambert and Gaetan walked in silence for a time down the path that led back to the inn. Lambert mulled over the ealdorman’s words as they went, worrying at a spot on the inside of his mouth with his tongue that was sure to turn into a sore in the coming days, given the amount of salt he’d consumed with supper. Gaetan, too, seemed to be lost in thought, his expression sour.

“Folk are restless,” he said after a time, his voice heavy with resentment. “That some kind of threat?”

Lambert shrugged. “I think it was more of a warning.”

“I’ve had enough of warnings. Often enough, they come in the form of a knife in your belly.”

Lambert privately agreed. Common folk had never treated him the same since first he’d ridden out on the Path with golden eyes and a belly full of anger. It hadn’t gotten any easier in the many years since then. Nasty looks, people spitting on the ground as he rode past, the hushed whispers as they huddled on the other side of the tavern—these things he could handle. No, it was the way the children looked at him, as if he were going to gut them and hang them over his saddle on the slightest whim, that cut him to the core. The ones who were afraid that he would do to them as had been done to him all those years ago. The ones who ran screaming at the sight of the twin swords on his back. The ones who saw him as just as much of a monster as the creatures he hunted. Those were the ones that hurt the most.

And maybe he deserved it. He’d hardly lived his life as a saint. He’d done things in his time that any reasonable person might have called monstrous, and he hadn’t felt the slightest bit of remorse. Was that a result of the mutations, or had he always been this way? It had been so long now that he could hardly remember. It was hard to imagine Eskel doing some of the things he’d done—but then again, it was hard to imagine Eskel condemning others to this life, and he’d done it all the same. He’d taken a child surprise just as Geralt had, and Vesemir before him. It was especially hard for Lambert to reconcile Eskel’s gentle, stable presence with the chaos and pain that had torn him from his own life before Kaer Morhen.

“You’re awful quiet,” Gaetan said, jerking him out of his thoughts.

“Sorry. Got a lot on my mind.”

“Don’t we all.” Gaetan’s sarcastic tone was tempered by his grin. “But listen,” he said, more seriously this time, “I…appreciate you coming with me. To Stygga, I mean. And here. I know I’m not the easiest guy to get along with. I haven’t given you much cause to like me, and even less to trust me.”

Lambert shrugged.

“Despite how it might look, I’m not stupid. I know damn well you didn’t want to come. Judging by what happened to Karadin, I’d assume that you don’t feel too kindly towards my school. Can’t say I blame you.”

“It’s not about that,” Lambert said curtly.

Gaetan shrugged. “You don’t owe me a damn thing, is my point. The road ahead is dangerous. I would understand if you decided to go back to Nazair. All three of you.”

“Geralt and Ciri are chronic do-gooders,” Lambert said with a sigh. “They’re both stubborn as chorts and twice as thick in the skull. Good luck getting them to fuck off. And…” He chewed on his words a moment. “The way I see it, I don’t really have a choice.”

Gaetan cocked his head. “I don’t take your meaning.”

“I don’t expect you to.”

The two of them reached the door to the inn in the midst of their conversation, and Lambert suddenly felt too tired to continue it. He made straight for the stairs when he got inside, with a passing word to the innkeep that yes, he would take that bathwater now, and didn’t stop walking until he was in his room with a closed door between himself and the questions that had been visibly forming on Gaetan’s lips. He sat on the bed, head in his hands, trying to make sense of his own jumbled thoughts.

⁂

The bath did wonders for Lambert’s sore muscles, but nothing for the knots in his mind.

He sighed as he sank into the steaming water, leaning back against the tub’s wooden rim. It was a piss-poor substitute for the steam pools at the palace in Assengard, or Keira’s illusory private bath in her perpetually starry clearing, but it still felt pretty damn good after a couple of weeks of cold rivers and colder rain. The water was clean and almost hot enough to scald, and that was all he could really ask for. A few years back, he would’ve considered this the height of luxury; something decadent to do with the coins that were burning a hole in his pocket from a freshly-completed contract. These days it didn’t quite scratch the same itch.

He still couldn’t quite nail down exactly how he felt about Gaetan. The truth of it had long been lost amid a shifting landscape of resentment and bitterness. A part of Lambert felt treasonous even riding alongside him. He filled the empty space where Aiden had once stood in all the wrong ways.

It wasn’t his fault. Lambert knew that, rationally. Gaetan had no hand in what had happened to Aiden; in fact, for all Lambert knew he had helped him avoid his ultimate fate for a time. There seemed to be no love lost between Gaetan and the other witchers of his school, save for Aiden and perhaps one or two others who were already long dead.

Still, the mere association was enough. Grief was funny that way; the oddest things tore Lambert wide open when he was least expecting it. Perhaps worst of all, he found himself liking Gaetan as time went on. In the moments when the facade he wore dropped, and Lambert could see him for who he really was, he felt a spark of recognition. Was that destiny? Or had the troubles he’d suffered over the past five years finally turned his brain to cottage cheese?

Cheese or not, his head was starting to ache. This was what he got for thinking too hard.

The bathwater had started to cool. Lambert got out and dried himself perfunctorily before flopping onto the bed with a groan.

The wall groaned back.

Lambert stiffened, pricking up his ears. That was Gaetan’s voice, there could be no doubt about it. And when he listened closely he could hear more—a witcher’s distinct heartbeat, much faster than usual; his breath, coming in quick, shallow pants; the unmistakable sound of skin rubbing against skin.

Lambert swallowed, his face burning. _Oh._ He could hear every detail as clearly as if he were standing right next to him. The thin wall that separated his room from Gaetan’s provided no barrier to a witcher’s senses.

He rolled over on his side, trying to put it out of his mind, but failed miserably in that respect. He struggled with himself, with the wrongness of it all. Surely Gaetan must have known that Lambert would hear him. That begged the question—did he _want_ him to listen? Or would it be better to simply plug his ears and say nothing of it?

The insistent throb of his stiffening cock put a rapid end to any moral quandaries. There was a little thrill in it, Lambert admitted to himself reluctantly as his hand strayed lower, to listen unseen to something so private and personal. He bit his lip as he took himself in hand, careful to stifle any noise, and slowly began to stroke.

Each grunt, each little hitch of Gaetan’s breath in his throat, sent a wave of exhilaration through Lambert. He thought of how Gaetan must look, his face flushed and lips parted, one arm thrown over his face to hide his eyes. Unbidden, the memory of him undressing by the stream in Erlenwald came to the forefront of Lambert’s mind. The stretch and pull of his muscles under flesh threaded with silvery scars. Skin tanned from days out riding in the sun. The chain of the ubiquitous medallion accentuating the line of his collarbones.

The fantasies ran together as Lambert surrendered to them. Pitchfork scars on his flank. Claw marks that slashed across a lily-white throat. A head of chestnut curls. A head shaved smooth. A voice like spiced honey, dark and rich. A desperate groan, pinched by a nose that had been broken one too many times.

A cat’s head medallion, resting against skin flushed by desire and beaded with sweat.

“Fuck,” Lambert murmured under his breath before remembering to swallow the rest of his words. He froze, sure that he’d been overheard, but there was no change in Gaetan’s breathing from the other side of the wall. If anything it was growing faster—he was sure to be close by now—

Lambert resumed stroking himself, keeping his mouth firmly shut, losing himself in the fantasy once more. The sounds from the other side of the wall washed over him, sending pleasure through him in waves. Lambert’s other hand gripped his thigh, cupped his balls. He bit his lip hard, holding back a groan, as a spark turned to a flame which grew hotter and hotter with each passing second. He stroked himself furiously, thrusting into his fist, his muscles trembling with tension and begging for release.

They didn’t have to beg long. Lambert came with a choked gasp, stroking himself arrhythmically, fighting to keep his breathing under control. He wasn’t so lost that he failed to hear Gaetan’s climax moments later, accompanied by a breathless groan and half-formed swear.

Lambert lay motionless on the straw-stuffed bed, mentally weighing the odds of its frame giving him away when he rose to fetch a rag with which to clean himself. He resigned himself to it after a moment. If he’d heard Gaetan so clearly, there was no way that his own actions had gone unnoticed.

He cleaned himself up as best he could, tugged on his trousers, and fell back into bed as a wave of guilt crashed over him. What the hell was he playing at? Gaetan wasn’t Aiden, not by a long shot. Conflating his feelings for one with feelings for the other was only going to cause him more heartache in the long term. And Gaetan…what the hell did Gaetan want from him, anyway? It was impossible to say.

Perhaps Lambert had overheard him tonight by chance. Perhaps Gaetan had wanted him to. Either way, he certainly hadn’t done anything to stop himself. He found himself torn between anger at himself and simple shame as he fingered the twin medallions that hung around his neck.

He slept poorly that night, even once Gaetan began snoring softly on the other side of the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warning:** accidental voyeurism
> 
> Updates for this story may be a bit slower from this point forward. Like a lot of other content creators, my output has been affected by the general stress of current events, and I can no longer manage biweekly updates for both this story and [Hungry Like the Wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236126/chapters/63857530). I'm shooting for every 3 weeks going forward (Hungry Like the Wolf will continue updating every other Wednesday). If/when I run out of cushion chapters, there may be a short hiatus while I work on the next arc of this story. 
> 
> Thank you for being patient, and (as always) I deeply appreciate you taking the time to read and leaving comments. A little less than three years ago I was a brand new fic author who nearly cried from happiness when 20 of you clicked on the first chapter of Silver for Monsters. I've been to hell and back since then (and put Lambert through worse), and your support has meant the world to me. Every word of this story is for you. <3


	9. River of Ash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read as always by the indefatigable [bookscorpion!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookscorpion)

Lambert was the last one down for breakfast the next morning.

He’d tarried in his room as long as possible: scrubbing his face in the wash bowl, taking stock of his potion supplies, oiling his blade, but the point finally came when he could avoid it no longer. His stomach was growling, and the four of them would have to be on the road soon if they ever wished to reach Novigrad. Lambert could have happily done without that, as well, but the only way out of the situation he’d found himself in was forward.

Gaetan’s eyes met his as he descended the stairs into the tavern, and a pang of guilt struck Lambert like a crossbow bolt. He hastily looked away and seated himself on the far side of Ciri, as far away from the other witcher as possible. No point in pouring fuel on an already burning fire.

After a disappointing breakfast that he shoveled into his mouth without really tasting, the four of them gathered their things and set off down the road into the wood. The ealdorman nodded at Lambert as they passed. Lambert nodded back. Warning heeded. Even if the old man hadn’t said a word, it would have been impossible to miss the unease and resentment that churned away under the surface of the little town. It was a good thing they were making their exit before things got ugly.

The road through the wood was dark and twisted, but mercifully free of monsters. The worst they had to worry about were the midges, which swarmed thick this close to the Pontar’s stagnant shallows. After a few hours, Lambert did find himself wondering if he wouldn’t rather have fought a chort. Immune to disease though he was, the bites stung, and death by a thousand cuts was just as bad, if not worse, than a single mortal blow.

He could hear the sound of the river in the distance, and the rush of its waters swelled in his ears the nearer they rode to their destination. As they drew close, other sounds joined the cacophony: boots stamping on packed earth, trees being felled, meat roasting on fires, men yelling, and underneath it all the sound of a wooden ship creaking as it sat anchored and fighting the river’s current.

They emerged from the trees, at last within sight of Novigrad’s grey stone walls and mounded red tile roofs in the far distance. The encampment in which they now found themselves was Redanian, from the sight of the eagles that emblazoned the banners hung by the tents and the red and white paint that adorned the armor the soldiers wore. Several men were engaged in constructing a defensive wall around the settlement out of logs with their ends whittled into spikes. Others were taking stock of supplies that were being brought ashore from a massive barge that sat moored on the river’s banks, its crimson sails hanging limp from its masts. Still others were pitching tents, stirring enormous cauldrons of stew, and repairing battered pieces of armor.

“Ho!” one of them cried as the witchers approached. “Who goes there?”

“Easy,” Lambert called back, one hand raised. “We’re witchers. Ealdorman at the town down the road said you might have some work for us.”

The soldier jumped down from the half-constructed platform he’d been keeping watch from and walked over, eyeing them curiously. Lambert pulled his horse to a stop and waited.

“You’re witchers?” The soldier said, cocking his head.

“We’re sure as shit not cobblers,” Lambert shot back with a gesture at his medallion and the swords strapped to his back. “Ealdorman tell us right? You have a job for us?”

The soldier scratched his head. “Aye, the Captain might. I’ll take you to ‘im.”

Lambert nodded. The soldier turned and led them deeper into the camp.

They found the captain of the ragtag company in one of the larger tents by the river’s shore, sitting at a desk and furiously scribbling down missives on parchment. The man looked tired, aged beyond his years by the horrors of war. A fresh wound disfigured his temple. Lambert could tell from the smell that it was starting to fester.

“I’ve brought some witchers, sir,” the soldier who had led them there said with a rigid salute. “Thought they might be able to help with the beast.”

The captain looked up from his papers, sizing the four of them up with weary eyes, and sighed. “Very well. As you were, Gernot.”

Gernot nodded, turned on his heels, and marched out of the tent. Lambert stood with crossed arms, flanked by the others, and waited as the captain finished scribbling out his sentence and then placed his quill back into its inkwell with a sigh.

“I s’pose word’s gotten out, then.” He ran a hand through his hair distractedly, wincing when his thumb brushed the wound at his temple. “As if our odds weren’t bad enough already. Nilfgaard lies before us, Catriona behind, and we’ve been caught in the middle with a ravenous devil that hunts my men at night. I’ve lost four this week. Naught left of them but scraps.”

“A devil?” Lambert said incredulously.

The captain shrugged. “Don’t know what else to call it. Every man who’s seen it damn near shit his trousers while he was running away. Big, evil-lookin’, teeth sharp as knives. Red eyes. Mind you, we know how to handle monsters,” he added, seeing the looks Lambert and Geralt were giving each other. “Plenty used to ghouls and the like, close to the plague pits as we are. This is different. Never seen anything like it.”

“Where does it hunt?” Ciri asked, her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “You said there were mass graves nearby?”

“Aye, there are,” the captain said with a nod. “Beast doesn’t just hunt there, though. Every man it’s taken was patrolling outside camp. We don’t have our walls up yet, or it wouldn’t be a problem.” He sighed. “The boys are starting to get nervous. Soon enough they’ll be refusing to go at all.”

“We can take care of it for you, for a price,” Geralt said.

The captain nodded wearily. “How much?”

“A hundred or so crowns. Nothing you can’t spare. And passage into the city.”

The captain raised an eyebrow incredulously. “You _want_ to go to Novigrad?”

“Got our reasons,” Lambert said with a shrug. “Do we have a deal?”

“…Aye.” He nodded slowly. “We have a deal.”

The man shook Lambert’s hand with a faintly disgusted expression on his face and nodded curtly.

“Who should we report to when the job’s done?”

“Quartermaster’s got his tent on the other side of camp, there.” The captain gestured in the general direction. “He issues coin, papers, and the like. Should be able to get you passage into the city.”

“That’d better be the case,” Gaetan muttered under his breath. Geralt nudged him in the ribs with an elbow.

“Be seeing you,” Lambert said with a nod, and headed out of the tent.

The witchers regrouped on the other side of camp, out of earshot of the captain’s tent.

“Graveir?” Ciri said with no preamble, cocking her head at the rest of them. “He described one exactly—like he was reading a passage out of one of Uncle Vesemir’s books.”

“Admit it sounds like one.” Geralt nodded, folding his arms. “Victims don’t make sense, though. Graveirs prefer dead meat; the more rotten, the better. A pit full of week-old corpses would be as good as a buffet for one of them. No reason for it to be hunting outside its territory.”

Lambert frowned. “You’ve got me there. It doesn’t make much sense to me, either.”

“So let’s go look instead of sitting around with our thumbs up our asses,” Gaetan suggested with a shrug.

“Eloquent as always,” Ciri jibed back. “But I must admit you’re right. Shall I go investigate?”

“I’ll come with you,” Lambert said, adjusting his swordbelts. “You never know what might be hunting around here.”

Gaetan moved to join them. “Me too.”

“I can take care of myself,” Ciri protested.

“A pack of frenzied ghouls can overwhelm even a full-fledged witcher,” Geralt said pointedly. “Pride’s no reason to take risks.”

“As you wish, Uncle Vesemir,” she said with an ironic curtsy. “I’ll just be fetching the horses, then.”

Geralt rubbed his temple as Ciri stormed off toward where they’d left their mounts. “Sometimes it feels like she gets more stubborn by the day.”

“I wonder where she gets that from,” Lambert said drily. “See you later?”

Geralt nodded. “I’ll see what I can do about finding us a place to camp. Happy to sit this one out.”

“See if you can find something decent to eat, too,” Lambert called back over his shoulder as he and Gaetan made to follow Ciri. “I’m still not convinced that old hag wasn’t trying to poison us.”

⁂

It didn’t take Lambert, Ciri, and Gaetan long to track down the site of the nearest attack.

The wind had shifted as they walked, carrying with it the detritus of the city that sat hunched on the horizon like some kind of gargoyle. The scent of smoke and excrement and the unmistakable stench of rotting bodies all but drowned out the metallic tang of blood they had been following, but luckily the ground was soft, and the soldiers had left ruts in it when they came to cart what was left of the body away. It was a simple matter to follow the path to their destination.

Though the soldier’s remains were long gone, there could be no mistake that this was the site of the attack. The earth at the end of the trail was churned up, indicating a struggle, and all around the spot were rust-colored stains where blood had seeped into it. Lambert knelt and scraped his finger through it, holding it up to his nose afterward so he could smell more clearly, and wrinkled his nose.

“Blood’s about five days old. It rained between then and now, but it’s almost dry again.”

Ciri frowned. “What are you making that face for?”

“Smell for yourself.”

Ciri copied him, picking up a clump of dirt and sniffing it cautiously. She retched a moment later and dropped it, wiping her glove on her trousers.

“The lovely fragrance you’re smelling is cadaverine. It comes from putrefied meat.” Lambert rose, dusting off his hands.

Ciri shook her head. “I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies, but I’ve never smelt anything like that before.”

“Nah, you just haven’t smelled it this strongly,” Gaetan corrected. “It’s concentrated. If you think it’s bad for you, just imagine how it smells to us.”

“Well, why is there so much of it, then?” She said, placing her hands on her hips. “There was only one body, and the captain at the garrison said there wasn’t much of it left to rot.”

Gaetan shrugged. “Means your guess was right. Graveirs have cadaverine in their teeth.”

Lambert nodded. “Even if this guy had escaped, he still would’ve died. It’s incredibly toxic. I’m not saying being eaten alive is a good way to go, but…well, tough choice to make.”

Ciri grimaced. “Indeed. Shall we go?”

The other three sites were much the same—blood, the occasional scrap of cloth or piece of bent plate metal, the cloying stench of cadaverine. All signs pointed to a graveir being the culprit. Although Lambert had to admit that Geralt had a point about the choice of live victims, the case seemed pretty cut-and-dried from where he was standing. They had a description of a graveir, evidence of graveir attacks, and a series of mass graves within spitting distance that probably had new bodies dumped into them daily. Perfect conditions for necrophages to thrive. Hell knew where they came from, but it never took them long to sniff out a corpse.

The three of them returned to the garrison soon after. Geralt had managed to pitch camp and even hunt down a couple of hares while they were gone, and Lambert’s stomach growled in response to the smell of roasting meat.

The evening sun still hung in the sky, though it was slipping ever lower with the passing minutes. The witchers had some time to kill before they could make any further progress tracking down their target. The graveir was unlikely to leave its necropolis unless it was hungry, and given the timing of the previous attacks it was unlikely to be hunting tonight. Still, it could be certain that come nightfall there would be ghouls aplenty, scuttling out of their burrows to feast upon the dead. It would be simple to follow the sounds of their feeding and then track them back to the nest.

Attracted by the scent of roasting meat, a handful of the soldiers threw caution to the wind and joined the witchers for their humble meal, bringing with them offerings of potato stew that had been heavily peppered to cover up for the complete lack of salt, a bottle or so of bitter herbal liquor, and an assortment of hand-carved dice and battered Gwent cards. Gernot was among those who joined them around the campfire, and proved himself to be an unexpected virtuoso at cards. With clever use of the monster deck, he beat Lambert in two hands. Lambert managed to win back his dignity in the next round, but only just.

The evening passed quickly. Their companions were still making merry by the time the witchers gathered up their gear and made for the edge of camp. The soldiers paused in the midst of guffawing over a story one of them had been telling about a dwarf and an unfortunate rock troll to send the four of them off with a loud, off-key rendition of _The Maids of Vicovaro._

The sound faded quickly as Lambert and the others headed out in the direction of the corpse pits, as did the subtle glow of the fires within the encampment as they passed through a sparse grove of knobbly trees.

“Awfully cheerful, aren’t they?” Gaetan remarked as they walked. “Considering they’ll probably be dead by month’s end.”

Geralt shrugged. “It’s the human condition. Gotta believe there’s something to live for. Otherwise there’s no point in any of it.”

Lambert hummed noncommittally, feeling an odd twinge in his gut at picturing Gernot and the others lying trampled in the blood and muck of a battle soon to pass. Against all odds, they were good men. Kids, really. Some of them didn’t look old enough to grow a beard, much less die for a cause that had already forgotten them.

“I’ve a question,” Ciri said after a fashion, as the scent of decay grew ever stronger on the breeze. “Why bury the corpses here? Why not on the other side of the river?”

“Necrophages,” Geralt said simply. “If I had to guess, the Hierarch probably doesn’t have enough men to defend every gate. If the pits were any closer to the city, they’d be hunting inside the walls before anyone could stop them. Not to mention the smell.”

“I suppose that’s fair.”

Lambert’s medallion vibrated suddenly, and he drew his sword in a flash, whirling around.

There was nothing there.

He looked again, conscious of his pupils dilating as he scanned the darkness, but there was no movement, no sound. It wasn’t until he almost tripped over the corpse that he realized why.

The ghoul was already dead, and probably had been for a couple of days. It wasn’t a blade that had felled it, though. Several large pieces of the body were missing, torn away in chunks from the underlying bone and sinew. Even before Lambert knelt to examine the wounds, the cloying stench of cadaverine already clung to his nostrils. He pulled the collar of his gambeson up over his nose, grimacing.

“Geralt,” he called. “Come look at this.”

Geralt grunted, crouching down beside him with a frown. “Sharp teeth…width of the bite marks suggests a dislocatable jaw. And the smell…” He hummed thoughtfully. “Look, the ribs are cracked. Marrow’s been sucked out.”

“There’s another one over here,” Ciri called from further down the road. “The limbs are missing. It cracked the skull, but left the brain behind.”

“Picky eater,” Lambert remarked, getting to his feet.

“Attacks are consistent with a graveir, but a graveir wouldn’t eat live prey like this, let alone other necrophages.” Geralt groaned.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Geralt nodded. “Cemetaur.”

“A cemetaur?” Ciri wandered over to them, covering her nose with her sleeve.

“Female graveirs,” Gaetan said from where he stood idly by, leaning against a signpost. “Five times as rare and twice as ugly. They like fresh meat—alive if possible. Up to and including other necrophages.”

Lambert laid a hand on Ciri’s shoulder. “Step carefully. If this thing gets its teeth in you you’re gonna lose an arm. Maybe worse.”

“Noted.”

It was a simple task to follow the trail of dismembered ghouls the rest of the way to the corpse pits. The stench was incredible. There were no less than three mass graves dug along the riverbank, dug just deep enough so as not to violate the water table. The bodies within were twisted and mangled—some by necrophage teeth, others half-charred by previous burnings. Those that still had skin were covered in boils, putrid yellow and green. Lambert fought back the bile that rose in his throat. Rot was one thing—he’d not have survived on the path if that bothered him—but the smell of sickness was something else entirely. Even though he himself had nothing to fear from Catriona, his body still revolted at the sight as if trying to preserve itself.

To one side of the pits was a makeshift dock, where the barge that presumably ferried the dead across the Pontar for disposal made landing each day. To the other lay an enormous patch of churned earth littered with the corpses of still more dismembered ghouls and alghouls. Some of these, at least, had been dispatched by swords and pikes, presumably wielded by guards that accompanied the transport. They had been fed on, but the lack of blood around the bite marks indicated that the wounds had occurred after death. Consumed by other ghouls, most likely. They were at the bottom of the food chain, as far as necrophages went, and had little scruples over feeding on one of their own.

The ghouls’ claws had left a distinctive trail in the muck, which the witchers followed up the embankment and into the trees.

The nest was further away from the pits themselves than Lambert had anticipated, and a quick glance was all it took to figure out why. The clearing he and the others now found themselves overlooking was positively overrun with the beasts. It was hard to tell exact numbers, given the way they crawled over each other like ants swarming a piece of rotten fruit, but if he had to hazard a guess there were at least two score. He counted three distinct nests spaced throughout the clearing, protected by small outcroppings of rock and littered with the gnawed bones of the corpses they had dragged back from the pits for consumption.

“Well, damn.” He whistled under his breath.

“Cemetaur won’t be here,” Geralt muttered. “They’re not intelligent, strictly speaking, but they do like solitude. We’ll probably find it up there.” He nodded at a stone wall, just visible on the next hillock.

“What’s our move, then?”

Geralt shook his head. “Can’t leave this alone. Ghoul pack’s big enough to cause problems on its own, and if we go after the cemetaur there’s a good chance they’ll hear the noise and come running.”

“So what, split up?”

“Split up,” Geralt agreed. “Ciri and I will handle the ghouls. You and Gaetan head up there and look for the cemetaur. We’ll find you when we’re done.”

“Try not to get chewed on too much, old man.”

Lambert clapped Geralt on the shoulder and slid down the other side of the hill, gesturing for Gaetan to follow. The two of them circled wide of the ghouls’ clearing, heading toward the ruins Geralt had indicated. As they passed by, the unmistakable sound of a grapeshot bomb exploding and a chorus of hissing ghouls echoed in Lambert’s ears.

“C’mon,” he hissed, urging Gaetan to hurry up.

Geralt’s reasons for dividing things the way he had hadn’t escaped Lambert. Ciri detested being treated like she was fragile, but both of them knew that she was the only one of their number who likely wouldn’t survive a wound dealt by a cemetaur. Her Elder Blood and the precursor mutagens she’d received as a child did give her some advantages, but not against poison.

The ruins themselves suggested the shape of a small chapel, though its thatched roof had long since decayed. There wasn’t much left inside but the stub of a tallow candle, and the remains of a tin offering box, which from the look of things had been looted bare long ago.

The doors to the cellar were intact, though, and bore claw marks. Lambert’s medallions hummed as they drew close, confirming his suspicions. He looked to Gaetan, who nodded in agreement and drew his silver sword.

Lambert focused his intent and drew the sign of Aard.

The resulting blast tore the doors from their hinges, sending the splinters tumbling down the steps. The responding growl echoed back at them from the crypt below.

Lambert turned to Gaetan, raising an eyebrow. “After you.”

“ ‘f you insist.”

Gaetan drew the sign of Igni, letting the flames flare up and then die down so that he was cradling a light in the palm of his hand. With Lambert following close behind, he crept down into the darkness.

The crypt itself was larger than the structure above would have suggested. There must have been a number of outbuildings surrounding it in the past that by now had decayed into nothing. The shifting currents of air on Lambert’s skin as he descended the stairs with Gaetan told him that there were likely multiple exits spaced throughout the chapel’s clearing. These passages had once linked them, allowing monks or scholars to scurry back and forth between buildings without their scrolls and parchments getting wet in the rain.

Unfortunately for the witchers, that meant the cemetaur was far from cornered, and could come at them from any direction. It was certainly there—Lambert could hear its growls reverberating off the damp stone walls—but it was difficult to tell exactly where.

“I’ll go left. You go right,” Lambert murmured, nudging aside a piece of crumbling stone with the toe of his boot.

Gaetan nodded, and began to make a circuit of the crypt, flame held high to illuminate its shadowy corners. Lambert did the same in the opposite direction, ears pricked for the sound of heavy feet on packed earth.

The cemetaur noticed him before he noticed it. As Lambert turned toward the cool breeze that seeped in through one of the exits, it erupted from the shadows and slammed into him like a ton of bricks.

The blow caught him in the diaphragm, and he grunted as it knocked the wind from his lungs and sent him tumbling backward across the dusty floor. He managed to roll and regain his footing just in time to skid backward into one of the stone columns that supported the ceiling above.

Lambert swore, spitting on the ground, and gritted his teeth. Three distinct snaps and a white-hot pain shooting through his side denoted a series of broken ribs. The cemetaur, its eyes burning red, had already sniffed out his landing spot and was lumbering steadily toward him.

“Shit,” he wheezed, and only just managed to dive out of the way before its fists crashed into the pillar, sending chips of fractured stone spraying into the air. He spun with his blade, fighting to ignore the screaming in his ribs, and slashed hard at its side.

The cemetaur hardly seemed to notice. Lambert’s blade had barely cut half an inch into its stony hide, and it was probably far more interested in how he would taste than in the dubious threat he posed, for the moment. It swung at him again, and he ducked under the force of its fist, swearing foully. Where the hell was Gaetan when he actually needed him?

No sooner had he thought the words than Gaetan materialized, sprinting out of a dark corner and sinking his silver sword up to half its length directly between the cemetaur’s shoulder blades. The monster roared with a sound like a cow being crushed by a millstone and rounded on Gaetan, tearing his grip free of the blade that sat lodged in its back.

Gaetan yelped, backpedaling and drawing his steel sword, for all the good it would do him. The cemetaur advanced on him steadily, swiping at him with its enormous arms, as he did his best to evade the blows and deflect the ones he couldn’t with the flat of his blade.

Lambert couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, now that he wasn’t the monster’s primary target. He could see the glint of Gaetan’s silver protruding from its back, as well as smell the sizzle of its flesh as the necrophage oil that coated the blade ate at the wound from the inside.

As dangerous as it was, he was going to have to retrieve the sword if they wanted any chance at winning this fight. The cemetaur was stronger than he’d anticipated. It was probably brooding as well, which meant that they were a whole new level of fucked if either of them made an incorrect step. Lambert was already damaged as it was. He was lucky its fists hadn’t hit him in the skull.

Forcibly quieting the voice in his head that fought hard against the idea of doing something so stupid, he sucked in a quick breath and charged at the monster from behind.

He jumped at the last instant, his fingers just managing to close around the leather-wrapped hilt of Gaetan’s sword, and held on for dear life as he tried to plant his boot on the cemetaur’s back for leverage. It noticed him immediately, wheeling around and clawing at its back in an attempt to shake him off, but Lambert held fast. He pulled as hard as he could on the embedded sword, digging his bootheel into the monster’s stony hide.

It stuck fast.

He yanked again, narrowly dodging a swipe of its claws, and swore. His palms were damp with sweat inside his leather gauntlets. It was getting harder and harder to keep his purchase on the blade.

A sudden blinding flash of light, accompanied by searing heat and the repugnant scent of rotten meat burning. Lambert pulled on the sword with all his might while Gaetan continued to direct a stream of flames into the cemetaur’s eyes, distracting it from his presence for the moment. Fire wouldn’t kill it, but it would definitely piss it off. He didn’t have many more chances to get the sword free.

Lambert tightened his grip and gave the blade one final yank, groaning through gritted teeth at the pop and sear of pain in his broken ribs—

It gave way at once, sending him tumbling backward onto the floor. A steady stream of dark, rancid blood poured from the wound, staining the ground on which the cemetaur stood.

Gaetan’s flames flickered and went out.

The cemetaur was well and truly enraged now. It was wounded, there could be no doubt about that, but the pain had only made it more dangerous. It threw itself at Gaetan, a mountain of muscle and sinew and gnashing, knife-sharp teeth. The smell that wafted from its open mouth was enough to make bile rise in Lambert’s throat.

_“Gaetan!”_ he yelled, and lobbed the sword as hard as he could in the direction of the other witcher.

Against all odds, Gaetan managed to catch it, and not a second too soon. The cemetaur lashed out with its tongue, dripping poison and slime, and struck Gaetan in the shoulder.

Gaetan countered with both silver and steel and sliced its tongue out with a single blow.

Battlefield leveled. Lambert attacked with his own blade, striking at the monster’s neck, arm’s, legs, in search of a major artery. He struck gold on the fourth blow, and a fountain of blood erupted from the cemetaur’s neck.

With a gurgling howl, it faltered, and fell to its knees. Lambert drew back his arm and slashed again in the same spot, partially decapitating the beast.

It convulsed, spewing frothy blood and black bile from the wound.

He struck again, and again, spraying himself with ichor, until the cemetaur’s head at last fell from its hulking shoulders and he could be absolutely certain that it was never going to get up again.

When Lambert came to his senses, he was panting and dripping with noxious effluvia. He wiped his blade on his soiled trousers with a grimace and sheathed it, casting his gaze around the darkened crypt for Gaetan.

He was there, in the shadows, leaning against a pillar with his head tipped back against the stone. His breath was shallow and ragged, and as Lambert approached he could see that his face was ashen and streaked through with blackened veins.

The tongue. In the ensuing rush of adrenaline, Lambert had almost forgotten about it. Gaetan’s armor was torn at the shoulder where it had lashed out, and dark, venous blood welled up slowly from the wound beneath. Its edges were unmistakably green and inflamed. He could hear Gaetan’s heart thudding rapidly in his chest from where he was standing, at a rate that might have been acceptable for a normal man but was unusually fast for a witcher.

He was dying.

That was undeniable, and the realization sent a spike of cold panic through Lambert’s chest. While a witcher’s metabolism might have been able to clear the poison from an indirect hit to a limb unassisted, the cemetaur’s barbed tongue appeared to have punctured the subclavian vein. Gaetan had received a large dose of its toxins, almost directly to his heart.

Lambert swore rapidly under his breath, fumbling with his belt for a vial of White Honey before remembering that it was gone, squandered on hangovers and other pointless problems over the past few months. He hadn’t brewed any more because he hadn’t been able to find any honeysuckle growing. The spring was still too cold for the vines to flower.

He pulled vial after vial from his belt, discarding them with increasing frustration and the soft clink of glass hitting glass as he failed to find what he was looking for. Blizzard. Cat. Thunderbolt. Leshen Decoction. Black Blood. Petri’s Philter—

Golden Oriole.

His last vial, shining in its glass bottle like a crucible of molten coins. He swirled it around once to mix it, watching it shimmer, and pulled the cork from its neck with shaking hands.

“Gaetan.”

The other witcher had fallen unconscious. He was still alive, but his breath grew more labored by the minute. Lambert shook him, and his head lolled limply on his shoulders.

_“Gaetan!”_ Lambert shook him again, and when that failed to produce a response slapped him sharply on the cheek.

Gaetan groaned and muttered something incoherent.

“Wake up,” Lambert said, trying and failing to keep a frantic note out of his voice. “You gotta drink this. Try not to choke.”

“Hnn?”

“Son of a whore,” Lambert muttered under his breath, as relief washed over him. “Here.”

He brought the vial to Gaetan’s lips and slowly tipped it upward, watching closely to make sure he swallowed.

Gaetan lapsed back against the column, but with the passing minutes his breathing grew easier. Lambert watched intently as the toxin-dilated veins in his face shrank and the wound itself grew less inflamed. He tore a strip of cloth from Gaetan’s undershirt, reasoning that it was already ruined anyway, and bandaged the wound as best he could.

Satisfied that he had done everything within his power for the moment, Lambert sank to the ground. It was as if all the endorphins and adrenaline of the fight left him in an instant, and he found himself exhausted and suddenly aware of how much pain he was in. In addition to his broken ribs, there was an enormous bruise blooming on his flank and a sharp pain in his ankle. The scent of the cemetaur’s blood on his skin clung to his nose, making him retch and then wince in turn as the motion pulled at his broken ribs.

Neither of them were going anywhere for the moment. The best he could do was wait and hope that Geralt or Ciri came looking for them and happened to have some Swallow on hand.

With one last furtive glance at Gaetan, Lambert folded his arms and tried his best to meditate.

⁂

It was the sound of someone moving that awoke Lambert from a pained and feverish dream. He started and then hissed as pain shot through his chest, opening his eyes to find Gaetan laboriously getting to his feet.

“You look like shit,” Lambert mumbled, though he was inordinately glad to see him awake and moving around.

Gaetan looked him up and down, a faint grin creasing his mottled face. “You’re no succubus yourself.”

“Whoreson broke my ribs,” he said with difficulty, trying to move and wincing again. “Probably my ankle too. Most of the blood isn’t mine, though.”

“Where’re the others?”

Lambert shrugged, and immediately regretted the motion.

“Can you stand?”

Lambert shook his head. “Probably not.”

“Just peachy,” Gaetan groaned, bending down to retrieve the cemetaur’s head and spear it on his trophy hook. He crouched down beside Lambert a moment later, threw one of his arms over his shoulder, and ignoring Lambert’s words of protest hauled him to his feet.

Lambert’s vision swam, and the flurry of choice swear words that had been brewing on his lips dried up instantly.

“Are you gonna live?”

“Not for lack of trying.” Lambert spat onto the floor and pressed his free hand against his broken ribs in a vain attempt to splint them. “Warn a guy next time?”

“Whatever you want. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

Every step was an enormous effort, but luckily—or perhaps unluckily—for Lambert, Gaetan seemed to have no qualms whatsoever about dragging him along. It did take time to make their way back toward the clearing where they had diverged from the others, but they made it, more or less in one piece.

The trees that shaded the grove loomed overhead as they drew near. An eerie silence permeated the night; Lambert could no longer hear the hiss and scrabble of ghouls, but absent too were the sounds of the birds in the trees and animals humping away in the undergrowth. Lambert’s heart squeezed in trepidation in the empty moments before he realized why.

The sudden crack of a bomb exploding echoed out over the wilderness, sharp in Lambert’s ears, and he breathed a sigh of relief. So they had managed it, then. Despite all odds he had actually been worried. That many ghouls had to have been a challenge, even for two armed witchers.

He and Gaetan crested the rise and there stood Geralt and Ciri—smeared with blood and muck, stinking of sweat and adrenaline, but alive and relatively unharmed. Geralt sported a shallow cut on his temple, and the fingertips of Ciri’s off hand appeared to be scalded somehow, but the satisfied grins on their faces was enough to satisfy Lambert that they would be alright. The corpses of the ghouls were scattered all around, stacked three deep in some places, utterly lifeless and going cold already.

At the ungainly sight of Gaetan dragging Lambert, Ciri came running forward. Lambert let himself be deposited at the foot of a nearby tree, scarred and seeping sap from a gouge that had certainly come from debris flung wide by the destruction of the nests. The acerbic scent of pine tar was a welcome diversion from the stench of decay and burning that filled the clearing. With only minimal complaint, he sat back and allowed the others to fuss over him: to press a ruby-red vial of Swallow into his palm; to painstakingly strip away his gambeson and bind his chest with strips of linen; to fashion a makeshift splint for his ankle that didn’t do much for the pain but at least allowed him to stand, as if he were the one who had been knocking at death’s door mere moments ago and not Gaetan, who stood by the wayside, scuffing the earth with his boots.

He had carried Lambert without a second thought. That, in and of itself, forced Lambert to reconsider his judgment of the man. He had written him off as shallow, self-absorbed. Willing to leave the rest of them behind in a blink if it served his interests. Perhaps he had judged him too harshly. Thinking back on the past several weeks, Lambert was hard-pressed to think of a time when Gaetan had truly wronged any of them. How was he to have known that any of their contracts would have panned out the way they did? And Lambert himself had certainly done his share. There was no denying that. It was a wonder he had any ground left to stand on after the damage he had caused with one hastily-uttered wish.

Their bleeding staunched, their wounds bandaged, the witchers slowly made their way back, past the overflowing corpse pits, toward the distant lights of the Redanian encampment on the riverbank. From the sound of things, their erstwhile companions were still making merry by the fire they’d set before setting out. Battered and bruised, but victorious nonetheless, they trudged onward with trophy in tow.

It was a hell of a price to pay for some scraps of paper, but in the end they had done it, hadn’t they? All that stood between the four of them and the free city of Novigrad now was a ferry ride across the fetid waters of the Pontar. And then…

Well, perhaps then they would have a chance to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the unplanned hiatus, and further apologies because it will likely continue for a while. Writing juice has been scarce lately.
> 
> That being said--on the reread, I'm quite happy with this chapter. It was a lot of fun to write, and Gaetan has really grown on me with time. I hope you liked it :)


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